Kürzlich erschien Hymns – das neue Album der englischen Indierock-Band BLOC PARTY. Exklusiv für Popmonitor hat Sänger KELE OKEREKE zum ersten Mal die neuen Songs Track für Track kommentiert…
THE LOVE WITHIN
I really wanted to combine this sense of religious ecstasy with the feeling you have when you’re on drugs and in love with the world. It’s about trying to explain joy. I wanted the music to send like a beam of light, something that glows.
ONLY HE CAN HEAL ME
It was the first song I wrote for the record. The guitars are like a soundscape and both guitarist and singer were approching to the same direction. On the one hand it’s talking about devine relationship, on the other hand it could be about any love or any kind of physical love. That’s what makes it exciting for me. I’m not a religous person but I definitely have a spiritual dimension. I think we’re all connected. That idea started the record.
SO REAL
I like the mood in it, the chords and the vocal melody. That’s really about heartbreak picking you up and forcing yourself to carry on. I was listening to devotional and meditional music and I learned that the function of the hymn is to celebrate human existence and faith of god – or to ask for this help or strenght.
THE GOOD NEWS
I was listening to this music at that time, and I wanted that kind of music that has a naked and vulnerable, kind of throaty raspy feel. That’s probably the most biblical song, like this idea of someone trying to come back to the right path.
FORTRESS
There are too many references on this record to the idea of the secret and I though it was important to talk about a physical love, a canon love, considered as profane. I thought if I have to make a record, I have to celebrate it in my way, as sex, making a part of it.
DIFFERENT DRUGS
It’s about watching relationships that seem to break. Two people that live in two different orbits, and how impossible this could be. I wanted the focus to be on textures, where my voice can sit. The vocals are the anker to this song, coming to the way of how we were writing, as bilding the picture around the voice. That’s one of my favourite tracks.
INTO THE EARTH
It’s about trying to enjoy the time we have together. It’s not the life you wanted or you planned, but it’s the life you have. You have to enjoy and make the best of it.
MY TRUE NAME
It’s about the idea of a kind of personification of nature, but it hasn’t got an atmosphere suggesting a connection to the earth.
VIRTUE
One of my favourite songs when we were writing it together. This sense of falling, or wanting to be good and just making mistakes, making things that you know you should not do. It’s about sex.
EXES
It’s about understanding at this point in my life, that maybe I didn’t treat people so well in the past. I wanted this kind of real song: melancholic and kind of wishful.
LIVING LUX
It was a really magical moment when we did that song. The song starts with probably one the best memories I have, and the song is a good way to say goodbye to it.
BLOC PARTY
Hymns
(Infectious / BMG / [PIAS] Cooperative)
VÖ: 29.01.2016
