Bloc Party Announce Anatomy Of A Brief Romance, Share “Coming On Strong”

The line that lands hardest in Bloc Party’s new single “Coming On Strong” is blunt enough to make you wince: “He shows me creep shots that he took of me before we’d even been introduced.” Kele Okereke spits it over a gnarly bassline and twitchy, half-programmed percussion, and it immediately frames what Anatomy Of A Brief Romance is doing. The band’s new album follows a relationship that began after Okereke split from a partner he’d been with for more than a decade, then unexpectedly met someone else. As the title suggests, the record traces that brief affair from the first spark all the way through to the end.

“Coming On Strong,” which sits as the album’s second track, catches that first stage of the story. Okereke has said, “I like the fact that harmonically and musically it feels dark, sinister, like something is creeping up.” That’s a pretty accurate read. The song has a sly, uneasy pull to it, the kind Bloc Party have always been able to lock into when they want things to feel charged rather than clean.

The band are well into legacy-band territory now, which is not to say they’ve stopped moving. Silent Alarm turned 20 last year, and a planned co-headlining run with Metric didn’t end up happening as intended. This year, Bloc Party will head out across the UK with another set of longtime peers, Interpol, while also lining up Anatomy Of A Brief Romance as the follow-up to 2022’s Alpha Games. They cut the album with Trevor Horn, the veteran UK producer behind a string of huge ’80s and ’90s hits, and you can hear a bit of that glossy, big-room instinct in “Coming On Strong,” even as the track keeps its edges sharp.

Okereke says the album tells the story in order, song by song, from attraction to breakup. In the press release, he put it plainly: “Every lyric you’re hearing on this record was something that actually happened to me. I had to tell the story, from start to finish.” That gives Anatomy Of A Brief Romance a fairly direct frame, even before you get to the titles themselves, which read like fragments from a relationship file left open on the desk.

Below, check out the Charlie Pryor-directed “Coming On Strong” video, along with the full tracklist for Anatomy Of A Brief Romance and Bloc Party’s dates with Interpol.

TRACKLIST:
01 “22.01.22”
02 “Coming On Strong”
03 “Love Bombs”
04 “Pigwig”
05 “Lagoon Blue”
06 “Muscleworks”
07 “Clark Kent”
08 “Worst Birthday Ever”
09 “Not Your Problem”
10 “Now We Can’t Be Friends”
11 “Rotherhithe”
12 “Stories”
13 “Moving On”
14 “Eulogy”

TOUR DATES:
11/20 – Birmingham, UK @ Utilita Arena 
11/21 – Cardiff, UK @ Utilita Arena 
11/23 – Manchester, UK @ Aviva Studios 
11/24 – Manchester, UK @ Aviva Studios 
11/26 – Brighton, UK @ Brighton Centre 
11/27 – Brighton, UK @ Brighton Centre 
11/28 – Sheffield, UK @ Utilita Arena 
11/30 – Dublin, Ireland @ 3Arena 
12/02 – December Glasgow, UK @ OVO Hydro 
12/04 – December London, UK @ Olympia 
12/05 – December London, UK @ Olympia  

Anatomy Of A Brief Romance is out 9/11 on cOnTAGIOUS LTD/Virgin.