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VICE Album Reviews, September 11: Bloc Party, The Tubs, Bonobo and More

Decoding the vibe of this week’s new music, with releases from This is Lorelei, Green Lung, and Standing on the Corner.

By Adam Christopher Smith

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Music journalism is going to the wall, and places for sensible, well-informed, nuanced takes on the latest releases are dwindling. So we thought we might as well put the final nail in the coffin.

Read last week’s album reviews here.

Bloc PartyAnatomy of a Brief RomanceContagious MusicI’m usually pretty good at reading the room, but Bloc Party’s new breakup record is sending mixed signals. I can’t make up my mind: does this come off as too corny for words, or is there something strangely beautiful about it? There’s a playful spirit at work, with Kele Okereke delivering detailed, reference-heavy lyrics in a range of curious voices over a TikTok-friendly production style. Broadway opening number-adjacent single “Pigwig” has been met with some ridicule for its dewy-eyed joie de vivre and on-the-nose lyrics (“Every day is such a vibe/Every day that we’re alive”), but I think Bloc Party might be onto something.

I mean, just this week, we’ve had Donald Trump erroneously claiming that firefighters lifted him out of the rubble on 9/11; Anthropic’s alignment science lead revealing that the chance that AI will kill all humans within the next decade is greater than 10 percent; Beyoncé trying to get her fans to buy an empty wooden box that costs upwards of $1,000; Nicolas Cage’s $10.5 million Malibu mansion almost falling into a massive sinkhole; police drones chasing shoplifters; Hunter Biden’s........

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