Bloc Party debuts new songs at KCRW session

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Bloc Party’s evolution sounded a little bit like a revolution on Wednesday night – so much so that during an intermission interview at a show the U.K. quartet did for KCRW-FM, the station’s music director Jason Bentley asked the band whether their new tunes constituted their “metal phase.”

“There are moments of musculature,” Kele Okereke said of the music on Bloc Party’s forthcoming album “Four,” due later this month. “But also I think some of our most tender moments.”

Bloc Party emerged in late 2004/early 2005 with the wiry dance-punk of “Silent Alarm,” before taking on more layered rock on 2007’s “A Weekend in the City” and then an electro-infused rock on 2008’s “Intimacy.” Ten of the new album’s dozen tracks were showcased Wednesday at an installment of KCRW’s Berkeley Street Sessions at Bob Clearmountain’s Apogee studio in Santa Monica. The station will air the session Aug. 15.

There are still traces of some of Bloc Party’s sharp punk riffage in some of the new songs, but others such as “Kettling” and “Team A” would almost qualify as ragers with their straight-outta-the-’90s blasts of guitar and and bass. Okereke’s croon, the quartet’s calling card no matter how the guitars sound, held it all together.

In L.A. to perform at this weekend’s dance music-heavy Hard Summer 2012 festival, Bloc Party made light of recent reports about strained relations in the band, including recent comments by the frontman that the quartet’s future was uncertain. “We’re not at liberty to talk about that,” Okereke joked, “because don’t have all our lawyers here.”

It kept with the loose feel of the private party, which was attended by about 200. “Are they giving you alcohol?” bassist Gordon Moakes inquired at one point. “Have some more.”

||| Live: Bloc Party plays at 11:30 p.m. on the Hard Stage at Hard Summer 2012 at L.A. State Historic Park downtown.

Photo by Jeremiah Garcia via KCRW