For a while, until enough time passed and I saw how much influence Kid A and Interpol had on this decade in music, I considered this album to be the very best of the decade. I still think it's up there, but as the years have gone on, it hasn't aged as well as I thought it would. What's even made it worse is just how much Bloc Party's stranded away from so much raw talent they displayed on this album. Kele Okereke started out as one of the best combinations of lyrics and singing that post-punk had to offer, and he's gotten completely lost in trying to become fully electronic. Which is usually a cool move for tons of bands, except when it's blatantly obvious that it's everything they're not supposed to be. Especially with a guy like Matt Tong manning the kit, who was a flat-out beast throughout this album (and its follow-up for the most part). He absolutely kills it on Like Eating Glass, which is would probably be in my top-ten favorite tracks of the decade if I ever decided to do such a list.
Regardless, you have to put the Bonus Tracks edition on here. Little Thoughts and Two More Years are nothing short of fantastic songs, and they work with the context of the album perfectly. I think what made this album so great is that it captured the combination of living socially and politically in 21st century London so well emotionally and instrumentally; and there's not a lot of albums released over the past several decades that you can say that about. Please come back to us Bloc Party. We miss you.
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