Concert Review: Bloc Party

September 14th, 2008. At the Marquee Club, Halifax
Fellow Concert goers: Owen Marchand and Lauren Allen.
Headliner: Bloc Party
Supporting: Apostle of Hustle

The second night of my Marquee weekend featured one of my favourite Canadian indie bands and one of the bigger U.K. Indie bands. I'll confess I'm not the biggest Bloc Party fan in the world, but the fact that a current band of their status was coming to Halifax made it a must see event. It was refreshing to get a big act that isn't just a has been, such as the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Elton John, etc, but rather a band in their prime. Bloc Party released their new album Intimacy at the end of August online, and will be releasing a physical copy later on in October. So that meant some of the new songs were getting road tested including Talons which was just released the other week and played for the first time live at this show.

The band used alot of strobe lights and there was lots of movement and dancing all show long. By the end of the show I was completely drenched in sweat from all the movement and heat caused by that many people. And I was right up at the very front so you don't exactly have that much space around you unfortunately. The crowd was really into the entire show

The band opened with One Month Off from their new album before moving into Hunting For Witches. I did enjoy the first six songs, but it wasn't until they played Songs for Clay and Banquet together that I really got into the show. You could also tell that Kele was more comfortable with the crowd and more into the show at that point. I'm also more familiar with songs from Silent Alarm and the first few off of Weekend in the City (shows I'm not that hardcore of a fan), and the later part of the setlist was more weighted towards those songs. It was funny listening to Kele between songs talking to "hell-E-fax". I guess I'm not used to hearing British bands.

After the main set the crowd obviously cheered quite loudly for an encore which they got. This is when Talons made its live debut. They then played Price of Gas with everybody loudly singing and dancing along before going into the dance song Flux. And then finally playing crowd favourite Helicopter which if you weren't singing and jumping up and down at this point you didn't know how to have fun. After this encore the band came back out because "we haven't played a show in a place like this for a while and we're having fun".
They played She's Hearing Voices as their final song. At this point the barrier between performer and audience was completely torn down as Kele went out into the crowd; crowd surfing, taking pictures, dancing with fans, etc. All in all a great show and I'm glad that I was able to go.

Apostle of Hustle did a great job opening up the show, although I wish they could have played longer. They only played 3 songs off their studio albums, and then played 3 or 4 other songs. Luckily they played Folkloric Feel which is one of my favourite Apostle of Hustle songs. Andrew Whiteman also held up a bra that was thrown on stage the last time they were in Halifax last October.

Here is the setlist:
One Month Off
Hunting For Witches
Little Thoughts
Waiting For The 7.18
Halo
Signs
Song For Clay (Disappear Here)
Banquet
Better than Heaven
This Modern Love
The Prayer
Like Eating Glass

Encore 1
Talons (first time played live)
Price of Gasoline
Flux
Helicopter

Encore 2
She's Hearing Voices