Photos by Mike Frash
After getting just a taste of the newly reunited Bloc Party at Outside Lands 2012, I’ve been obsessively fiending for more. Leaving that festival set Sunday afternoon in August, I vowed to see them the next time they came through the Bay Area, and I was able to do so this past Thursday at the Fox Theater, Oakland. Although playing to a venue only half full, Bloc Party performed as though they were headlining a sold out arena. They pulverized the crowd’s expectations one hard hitting, dance rock anthem at a time.
Bloc Party mostly played tracks off of their 2012 release Four, and the crowd instantly fed off the energy from the stage once Kele Okereke and his crew appeared following an opening appearance from The Dum Dum Girls. Heavily saturated in 90’s era electronic grunge songs, the set’s dance tracks had an even harder edge to their sound at the Fox. What I presumed would be a drum and base driven set morphed into more of a punk rock concert with underlying dance sensibilities. Refreshingly different from their greatest hits festival performance I witnessed at Outside Lands, Bloc Party chose to rock the fuck out of this Thursday night crowd.
Bloc Party jumped straight into it with a rousing rendition of “So He Begins To Lie.” They followed this opening track with a sampling of hits from their previous four albums. The crowd ate up fast-paced renditions of “Hunting for Witches,” “Positive Tension” and “One More Chance.” Bloc Party performed a rousing rendition of the crowd favorite “Banquet,” and it transitioned out of “Song for Clay.” It brought the crowd to a jumping frenzy, as many in attendance mimicked the unrelenting pogo jumping of lead singer Kele.
The night ended with two separate encores, foreshadowed by the conclusion of the main set with ”We Are Not Good People,” and the band’s casual mention that “This will end the first part of our evening.” The band came on quickly thereafter to play a four song encore of slower jams that included “This Modern Love” and ended with Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” which was actually an into for “Flux.” This encore concluded about twenty minutes before the concert curfew, and the crowd was amped and ready for more.
Bloc Party returned to the stage with a double encore. They played “Truth,” then finished the night with the crowd scream-along track “Helicopter” off of 2005’s “Silent Alarm.”
Considering this was a fantastic concert at a beautiful venue with a super energetic mid-week crowd, I feel extremely fortunate to have seen Bloc Party in this way. Agreed as a consensus amongst a majority of friends in attendance, had this show been earlier in the year, it would have certainly been a contender for top ten shows of 2012.
The Dum Dum Girls opened for Bloc Party, and their set highlighted songs of their excellent
2012 EP “End of Daze”
Great Shots!