Bloc Party, ABC, Glasgow, gig review: A band for whom messing about with their sound does a power of good

When they strain for those anthemic, arena-filling lines is when they sound at their least interesting

Somehow the new, reconditioned Bloc Party seem not entirely laddish enough to be part of a national tour promoting Chris Moyles’ return to the nation’s airwaves. Perhaps that’s because they’re no longer all lads; in the last four years of what’s been a bumpy but enduring existence together as a group, their former bassist Gordon Moakes and drummer Matt Tong have left and been replaced by Justin Harris and Louise Bartle.

With a different artist appearing on each leg of Moyles’ tour, the group took to the stage of Glasgow’s ABC in the very early stages of a comeback campaign of their very own. Their fifth album Hymns is out in January, and their recent announcement as headliners of next year’s NME Awards Tour is indicative of a concerted campaign to place themselves back at the forefront of the UK’s guitar-pop landscape. With the official warm-up dates not happening until December, a preview of the strength of their claims was found here.

Of course, there are few things which sound less forward-thinking in 2015 that the simple clash of guitars, and the sense is that singer Kele Okereke and guitarist Russell Lissack, the band’s remaining founders, know that. When they strain for those anthemic, arena-filling lines is when they sound at their least interesting. When they develop new textures born of Okereke’s enjoyment of club culture and an obviously shared understanding of the darker alleys of post-punk is when they excite the most.

So the opening ‘Eden’ sounds alluring and expansive, a moody click of drums and Okereke recasting the story of Adam and Eve as something darkly sexual. “Hello Glasgow, we are Bloc Party from England,” he yelps as soon as it’s finished, and they snap into festival crowd-pleaser mode with ‘Hunting For Witches’, a song with a suitably searing guitar and sneering vocal, yet not one which you could imagine being too gauche for a television advertising campaign.

It’s the moments of difference you find yourself searching for in a Bloc Party set; like the gorgeous, choirboy few lines of Bjork’s ‘Big Time Sensuality’ Okereke begins one song with, or the excitable, ravey dynamic to ‘Ratchet’, or being unexpectedly floored by one of the most conventional songs here. One of only two tracks from the new album, ‘Exes’ is a swooning ballad which makes good use of Okereke’s versatile voice and the vivid clarity of his best songwriting. “Everything that I was proud of / is everything that I’ve done wrong,” he croons at one point, a eulogy “to all the exes” and to past mistakes.

The song’s arrival was met, oddly, by a pocket of boos from sections of the crowd, and the unfailingly polite Okereke’s warning that “it’s not that kind of show, guys.” The show’s other new track, the single ‘The Love Within’ and its insistent, modulating synthesiser line, arrived with a promise of “no f***ing about”, but as crowd-pleasing as familiar hits like ‘Helicopter’ and ‘This Modern Love’ are, this is a band for whom f***ing about with their sound does a power of good.