Plumbiferous Media

With main project Bloc Party on hia­tus, British indie musi­cian Kele Okereke has focused on his own music, releas­ing his first solo album, The Boxer, on Mon­day. With The Boxer, Okereke takes the indie-electronic aes­thetic of Bloc Party and mixes it with a strong dance influ­ence for a buzzing, elec­tric sound. Unfor­tu­nately, this ends up more dis­jointed than any­thing else, which, com­bined with the fact that The Boxer never man­ages to step past a fairly pedes­trian approach to its wealth of gen­res, does the album very lit­tle good.

Okereke makes a num­ber of fairly odd musi­cal deci­sions with The Boxer. The first tracks espe­cially are laden with an inter­est­ing mix­ing job that gives the tracks the same qual­ity they would have as if they were being played through over-sized speak­ers at a rave or large con­cert. While it is cer­tainly arguable that this gives the album a cer­tain live­li­ness, it’s pri­mar­ily a cheap effect that could eas­ily be repli­cated one one’s own if desired, and it has the addi­tional effect of remov­ing any sense of rich­ness from the album.

Okereke’s vocals are as strongly-accented and emo­tional as they’ve ever been on his work with Bloc Party. Unfor­tu­nately, on The Boxer they’re not used nearly as well. Instead of being allowed to cre­ate their own pres­ence within the music, it seems as if they’ve been forced into it, which cre­ates a rather jar­ring sound. The best moments, such as second-half track “Rise” are rem­i­nis­cent of Okereke’s nor­mal strength, but for the most part, the album is notice­ably weak.

Okereke is joined by sev­eral back­ing vocal­ists through­out The Boxer, none of whom leave enough of an impact on the music to be espe­cially notable past their short pres­ence - they’re used more as effects than as any sort of inte­gral part of the music. The lyrics are used in much the same way, as on The Boxer Okereke has shifted away from the rem­i­nisc­ing that was so com­mon on his ear­lier work towards more dance-friendly rep­e­ti­tion (present but not ever-present in his work with Bloc Party). Given the sort of music Okereke has cre­ated with this album, this sort of lyri­cal approach isn’t sur­pris­ing - but there are only so many times you can hear Okereke sing “Walk tall” or “Ten­deroni” on the tracks of those names before it gets very old indeed.

In all fair­ness, Okereke has pro­duced an extremely diverse album. At the same time, that’s about the best that can be said for The Boxer. The album moves from the overly dance-infected open­ing tracks to what could per­haps best be described as Placebo at a rave, and later into indie-rock dance music, as lit­tle sense as that makes. Other tracks, com­pletely unlike the major­ity of the album, includ­ing “New Rules,” are then added. That par­tic­u­lar track attempts to move away from the heavy beat of dance music, but clearly strays too far, becom­ing noth­ing more than exceed­ingly boring.

Summed up, The Boxer is, at best, a dis­ap­point­ment. There are very few truly inter­est­ing aspects of the album, let alone any­thing truly good. The lyrics of The Boxer are entirely uncre­ative, the instru­men­tals overly cre­ative, to the point where many tracks are sim­ply a con­vo­luted mess of lines, and the vocals are any­thing but inspired. The Boxer was clearly a risk for Okereke; unfor­tu­nately, it was a risk that by no means paid off.

This post is tagged 30-39, Kele