Kele
Electric Ballroom, London
19/11/2010

Kele Okereke is happy. Ecstatically so, as he bounces around a strobey stage in a bright blue baseball cap at Camden’s Electric Ballroom to deafening cheers from an up-for-it, clubby crowd. It’s a far cry from the sombre Bloc Party days – all monochrome t-shirts and borderline emo-kid malnourishment. Fortunately, the band’s consistently amazing musical catalogue made up for their slightly pretentious image, and they deservedly emerged as one of the most universally acclaimed and influential bands of the last decade. Like The xx last year, on their now-classic 2004 debut ‘Silent Alarm’, Kele & co managed to capture the musical zeitgeist whole and then spit it back out in thirteen hauntingly infectious indie hits. At the time the record seemed genre-defying, but in hindsight the London trio revived the nineties guitar-dance legacy and made it their own – Okereke’s heartbreaking, distinctive vocal ensuring that the band, whilst spawning numerous musical copycats, could never be beaten on raw emotional power.

Later tracks on 2008’s ‘Intimacy’ hinted at a desire to swing away from guitar-led hooks and into a more synth-heavy sound, but it is only with Kele’s solo efforts that he has fully embraced the rave. Bloc Party purists might be disappointed with the near-abandonment of his indie roots – but the most important element – his unmistakable voice, prevails, and tonight Okereke sounds as clear and vital as he did five years ago – not to mention a lot more cheerful. The crowd go wild for material from solo album ‘The Boxer’, and he belts out the upbeat electronic anthems with his usual passion and presence, oddly but topically dedicating ‘Rise’ to the X-Factor’s Katie Wassel, but the biggest cheers are unsurprisingly saved for Bloc Party tracks – a triumphant rendition of heady club anthem ‘Flux’, and an encore mashup of ‘The Prayer’ and the anthemic ‘One More Chance’ showing that whilst Kele might have moved on from the band, he certainly still remembers…

Laura Vevers