By Evan Ferstenfeld

Who knew four rag-tag blokes that look like random participants plucked from a soccer hooligan beat-'em-up parade would turn out to be such shy, bashful folks? Since releasing their crackling debut Silent Alarm in May of this year, Bloc Party has made it their duty to update the high minded ideals of the sonically mix-and-match Clash while musically entering the funktastic regions where Gang of Four houses their riffage. Bloc Party is a band that can find it within themselves to rage against the machine with shiny dance songs about English Imperialism, only to stop its sonic wrecking ball long enough to shed a tear and sweep ladies off their feet.

The way the Party was kicked off on their September 10th concert, housed within the suitably rough-around-the-decibel crowded confines of the Electric Factory, the frontal attack of the four member formal alliance seemed poised to make a memorable first strike. As the lights shone down on the three men equal distances from one another at the front of the stage, stroking their guitars like ironic members of a Spinal Tap tribute band, the group wordlessly propelled the room into a frenzy by launching into the first track of their CD, "Like Eating Glass." Unfortunately there was no sign of jig dancing midgets or miniature Stonehenge emerging from the rafters, but apparently since I was the only one anticipating this development, no one seemed too bummed out.

Bloc Party quickly laid waste to the brunt of their catalogue within the first thirty minutes of the proceedings, speeding up its thinly-sliced riffs for the drum-and-bass anti-consumerist shambling of "Positive Tension" and the ping-pong guitar antics of "Banquet," giving the scene the frenzied feeling of a final minute bidding war on Ebay. It soon became clear that the album-perfect reproductions screaming towards us by guitarist Russell Lissack and bassist Gordon Moakes were leaving little room for any jam-outs to take place, something sorely lacking from a band with just enough solid singles to reach double digits.

At points the night felt like a confidence builder for the band, with the enthusiastic audience playing the role of the nurturing, aggressive girlfriend pushing them to the places that would get the crowd all hot and bothered. By the fourth song, the band's muppet coifed lead singer Kele Okereke, whose voice sounds like the high-pitched emoting midpoint between Tears For Fears lead singer Roland Orzabal and Robert Smith's vocal chords, finally bridged the national divide by meekly approaching the clearly enraptured audience to breathlessly tell us "You guys are soooo much more embracing than the New York crowd ever was!" I thought for a moment this might be the line he conjures up for every crowd he attempts to make aural love to, making it all the more easy to get into our hearts and ears, but soon felt foolish for doubting the honesty of our fearless hero when he informed us "This is the best show of the three we have done so far on our first American tour!," as the band quickly forgave me for such horrible thoughts with a rousing call to arms in the ass-shaking and thought-pondering stomp of "Pioneers."

As a sign of goodwill or perhaps to literally demonstrate how America is sometimes blinded by its tunnel-vision patriotism, Bloc Party flooded the Factory with a streak of patriotic American lighting displays, from the white strobe-light electrical storm created for "Like Eating Glass," the glorious reds streaming down from high above during the achingly beautiful crescendo of "Here We Are," and bathing us in colors that transformed the entire audience into a village of Smurfs for "Blue Light." The Bloc-heads concluded the formal chapter of their show with a fist-pumping rendition of the oh-so-aptly titled "Price of Gas." Singer Okereke obviously pointed out "This is a song about Evil!!!," but never specified if the crude barrel bubbler was a tribute to Dr. Evil or Evil Knievel, both anti-establishment heroes in their own charming ways.

Acting as if they were too embarrassed to tell us the show would eventually be coming to an end, the Party members disappeared off the stage so quietly it took a good two minutes to muster up a suitable encore hub-bub from the slightly under whelmed but high-spirited crowd. The band silently glided onto the stage for two more encores, finally loosening up and unhinging expectations with two new (at least new to us bloody Yanks) juicily decadent sonic experiments. Bloc Party's final song of the evening opened with numerous rib-cage rattling guitar pulsings, while Okereke prowled the stage like a mad scientist trying his damndest to get his Musical Insanity Apparatus to kick over and start up. Drummer Matt Tong's lightning cymbal blasts eventually had the crowd screaming "It's Aliiiiiive!!!" as the experimental beats and guitar shrieks re-animated a crowd who had mostly rushed back into the venue from the parking lot to catch the finale’s excitement. On a night filled with songs begging to be re-imagined in a live setting but had retained their studied rigidity, Bloc Party thankfully broke loose and become the outrageously entertaining Rock Gods we always knew they were, sending our expectations over the rainbow.