Whatever Bloc Party mean to you now – four years since their last album and two original members down – you can’t say they haven’t kept with the times. They’ve modernised their sound with the kind of “mature” chilly electronics popularised by the xx and that trip-hop beat that seems to be everywhere now, and they’ve updated their Shoreditch references too: instead of The Joiners Arms and cocaine, it’s the lobby of the Ace Hotel (Exes) and fennel tea (Into the Earth). Hymns, however, is let down by its ham-fisted “sensual meets spiritual” theme, and the fact that you can so clearly hear what Kele Okereke is singing. For every half-decent idea – the chamber chanting on Only He Can Heal Me, for example – there are cod-blues lyrics about praying down by the water (The Good News) or stomach-curdling lines such as “when we sex we hear the beat”. Guitarist Russell Lissack does his best to insert some typically wiry licks where possible, but there’s none of the claustrophobia or unease that used to make Bloc Party so vital.
