(Paris) When the Bloc Party group regains the bite of its beginnings, it can be heard in its leader Kele Okereke, who cuts across the riff on record and live in an interview, calling Boris Johnson a “liar”, among other acidities.
Posted at 10:30 a.m.
In 2018 and 2019, the British formation, which now only has two original members, replayed on tour the entirety of its first album, Silent Alarm (2005), that of revelation and consecration. A real bath of youth, as explained by Kele Okereke, singer and guitarist, met by AFP in Paris.
“Playing those old songs reminded me of the energy of the days of Silent Alarm. It influenced us, not to do the same thing — I don’t like to look at the past — but to show us where we should go,” he explains, dreadlocks under red cap, mint green waistcoat streaked with black.
Alpha Games, which comes out this Friday, allows the listener to go back in the big eight, like 17 years ago. With this deaf tension of the first titles day drinker and Traps which springs up in a geyser in the last seconds of Rough Justice.
The abrasive approach of this 6and drive also comes from the political climate of recent years in the UK and beyond. “As a lyricist, I have long tried to keep a positive angle, to put a little pink, including on hurtful things, but the world has changed, especially since Trump”, asserts the artist. “The optimist and dreamer in me is a bit dead”.
“A racist, a pig”
Brexit has thus indirectly inspired Alpha Games. “The UK was preparing to leave the European Union and there was chaos in our Parliament while the album was being written. I did not want to talk about politics or be didactic, but I evoke those who lie eye to eye”.
No need to pronounce the name of Boris Johnson, Kele Okereke comes there alone, without ever mentioning him. “I’m disgusted with what our government is doing and the Prime Minister is a fucking ugly pig, a liar.” “How do you explain to your child that the person responsible is a liar, a racist, a pig? How to believe in the system of what has become of the United Kingdom? “, he continues in a calm tone of lecturer.
Boris Johnson is currently entangled in the “Partygate”, a party scandal at 10 Downing Street during confinement. And Kele Okereke, an Englishman with Nigerian parents, does not forget that he was singled out for having written in 2018, when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs, an article in which he compared Muslim women wearing the full veil to ” mailboxes” or “bank robbers”.
Teeth behind the petals
We also ask the singer how he explains the disruptions of the world to his 5-year-old daughter and his 2-year-old son, in his homoparental family. “At home, we try to preserve them, they must remain children. There is a war going on in Ukraine right now and it is very uncomfortable to tell them about it”.
Geopolitics and its betrayals are reflected in the album by the theme of pretense, as in Rough Justice, where a certain jet-set could well hide sinister criminals. “As in the novel Glamorama of Bret Easton Ellis where the models were terrorists, the public face/private face side interests me”, he deciphers.
In Kreuzbergsong of 2and album A Weekend in the CityKele Okereke, then 25 years old, cried in the Berlin subway, his heart in pieces after yet another loving manipulation.
Now, at 40, as he sings in Callum is a Snake, he knows how to sniff out toxic relationships and detect the teeth behind the petals. The message is also carried from the cover of the album, with a carnivorous plant in a pretty flashy pink, a metaphor for the threats behind an innocent appearance.