Bloc Party have already confirmed the release of their forthcoming comeback album, Four, due for release this August, but overnight they released the first official single from their first record in four years (and one of our most anticipated albums of the year).
Following a four year hiatus that included break-up rumours, frontman Kele Okereke’s solo career, and at least one elaborate prank, the band make their official return with the release of lead single “Octopus”. Releasing it both to radio and online, alongside a colourful new video clip.
The song is already available to purchase digitally, but will also be released on a limited edition 7” vinyl along with non-album cut, “Straight Thur Cru” a week before August is planned to drop.
NME quoted Okereke as saying, “this song was one of the last songs that we wrote [for the new album]… We knew we had something so we kept beavering away and before we knew it, we had it.”
Sonically, “Octopus” marks a return to a sound fans have long wanted from the group, the choppy guitars and vibrant urgency of 2005 debut Silent Alarm. Moving away from the electronic territory of 2008’s Intimacy and Kele’s dancefloor-filling The Boxer, it’s a track that’s as pure a rock track as the band have written in some time.
Playing to what Okereke previously described as “the sound of four people in a room, loving what they do and doing it to the best of their ability.” The Bloc Party frontman has already bigged up the forthcoming album, saying “it is the best thing that we have ever done” adding, “it is the sound that only the four of us could make and I am prouder of it than any record we have ever made.”
Australian fans will no doubt get a chance to hear “Octopus” live, along with new cuts from Four before its August 20th release date, when Bloc Party play exclusively at Byron’s Splendour In The Grass this July.
You can watch and listen to the new Bloc party single below:
