Will it be their turn next?
With the first wave of festival goers turning up at Leeds on Wednesday, the somewhat out of the blue digital release of the new Bloc Party album will have passed some in this crowd by. That said set opener and recent single 'Mercury’ is firmly imprinted on the consciousness of Bloc Party fans and gained a good reaction, even if in style it’s an intriguing shift. There was only one other taster of new material with ‘One Month Off’ appearing in the second half of the set.
Bloc Party’s breakthrough Leeds and Reading performance came when they headlined the Radio 1 Stage in 2005, and they’ve worked their way up the pecking order with ease ever since to the point where they were main support to Sunday night headliners The Killers. During this performance front man Kele Okereke made no secret of the band’s desire to top the bill themselves and with a major set lined up for Scotland’s Connect this weekend surely their time will come south of the border. They’ve certainly got the crowd pleasers to pull it off.
After a few album tracks, including 'Hunting For Witches’, 'Positive Tension’ and 'Song For Clay (Disappear Here)’ the fan favourites started to roll. 'Banquet’ and 'Two More Years’ moved things up a level, before new track ‘One Month Off’ made way for a closing quintet of 'The Prayer’, 'So Here We Are’, 'Like Eating Glass’, 'Flux’ and 'Helicopter’.
So where next for Bloc Party and this festival? Sure they might not be at the same household name level, but they’ve as many albums and hit singles as The Killers and let’s not forget there have been some odd choices when it comes to headliners in the past, The Strokes with one very short album under their belt confuses me to this day. For now though Bloc Party should be celebrated as flying the flag for UK music in a section of the line up dominated by US acts, they were the only British band in the top two places on the Main Stage across the weekend and they delivered a performance and drew a big enough crowd to be considered as definitely holding their own.