Kele Okereke - Fatherland

Kele Okereke
Fatherland
2017
Spotify

Fatherland is the third solo studio album from Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke. Older and apparently wiser Kele has ditched the glitchy electronics for a more folksy record. Bloc Party in the beginning seemed to be so ahead of the curve. When Silent Alarm came out in 2005 it was on the vanguard of music. Progressive electronics, a tireless rhythm section and Kele front and center seemingly unconcerned with anything but the band's artistic vision. That extended into Weekend in the City where the almost literally brought you into their time recording in Berlin. Kele's other two solo records were progressive if not to ahead of their time in many ways but only touched the surface on some house and lo-fi electro sounds. Some of those elements make their way onto Fatherland, but very few and instead we get Kele brooding and meandering his way through an album with decent lyrics but almost no connection to it's audience. Bloc Party were about pent up rage, something bubbling deep within you needing to rise up and explode. That is what made their live shows so tight, they were so good at playing but also over ten years later "Banquet" still gets the crowd jacked. Not this album. "Capers" cannot be called anything but a ditty, as it bounces along with infantile futility. I mean it literally sounds like a Randy Newman song with none of the kitch. The entire listen leaves you scratching your head trying to figure out what He is even thinking.

Okereke became a father for the first time last year so this shift in style should not be a surprise, but I never thought it would be this dramatic. "Do U Right" is this early R&B inspired raucous track, but god does it fall flat. Kele's voice never has enough power to set these songs on fire and instead he is relinquished to be a pretty mediocre singer songwriter. "Versions of Us" which features Corinne Bailey Rae is packed full of emotion, and a real chill inducing track but you just get this sense that it could have been so much better, or at least so much different. At only 35 Kele still has plenty of time even though on this album it feels like he's aged 20 years in the past two. Yet Okereke takes a big risk in laying himself so bare on this record. He talks about fatherhood, being gay, reconnecting with his Nigerian roots and even reconnecting with his own father but the record feels more like a confessional than a proper album, it is just missing that thing that makes Kele's work special. Fatherland may be where Kele is currently at in his life, but hopefully his music takes a different direction in the future.

5.0 out of 10