No one could accuse Bloc Party of being averse to the dancefloor, or electronic music in general. Having internalized the jerky rhythmic lessons of their post-punk influences, they've eagerly outfitted their songs with club-friendly accoutrements and commissioned two albums of remixes. Yet the band is also often considered a major caretaker of trad-rock's rapidly diminishing flame, largely owing to its anthemics and lead singer Kele Okereke's lyrical earnestness.
Now, possessed by the same restlessness that's also lately stricken the Strokes' Julian Casablancas, Kele (having professionally dropped his surname) has made a solo album, and it's widely being framed as a bracing electro-minded departure. Admittedly, The Boxer inhabits electronic music more intimately than any of Bloc Party's proper studio efforts. However, the album's real departure involves less a greater embrace of synths and beats than the abandonment of soaring, big-tent songcraft. Regrettably, the lyrical earnestness remains.
In place of huge choruses and bombast, Kele offers an album heavy on tone, mood, and texture. Unfortunately, his efforts fail to make you forget the absence of things like hooks. Intriguing elements are in place-- the dubstep-influenced beats of opening cut "Walk Tall" and "The Other Side"; the kinetic minute and a half of squelchy synths and seismic breaks on the outro to "Rise". But rarely do the piecemeal bells and whistles add up to a worthwhile song, as "The Other Side" haphazardly trots out guttural grunts and light tropicalia touches, while "Rise" spends most of its running time meandering through a chintzy, xylophone-led groove.
At least those songs give you something to hold onto, which can't be said for "The New Rules" or "All the Things I Could Never Say" (a song title only Bono could love). Kele is in full introspective flower here, which means we get treated in the former to the gripping admission that he's "learning to be laid-back about things" while in the latter we have to put up with a tedious quarter-life crisis caused by an untrustworthy lover who's "making me older."
"Everything You Wanted" is whiny too, but it's more than saved by containing the album's one truly transportive refrain. Alas, the music's rather lukewarm, especially when you set it next to the album's most Bloc Party-ish cut, the driving post-punker "Unholy Thoughts". Given Kele's unwillingness to play to his widescreen strengths, perhaps it makes sense that the best moment here happens when he disappears entirely, pitch-shifting his voice into a thinly soft, Michael Jackson-like register on "On the Lam". Of course, there's not really a hook there, either.
