(Review and photo by DCist contributor Ryan Avent)

For the critically minded, a play of Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm is sure, at first blush, to scream comparisons to the other dance-floor rock bands of the moment, most notably the overproduced and omnipresent juggernauts The Bravery and The Killers. As everyone from NME to Pitchfork has instructed us, however, BP is not there for the critically minded; it’s there to knock your socks off, and even the most ink-stained, grizzled music journalist must struggle to make it through “Like Eating Glass” without doffing his fedora and shaking it around the newsroom.

Further listens seem to justify the ease with which one is able to hit repeat on this album without offending one’s scenester conscience. Bloc Party has personality. Or, more accurately, the immensely likeable lead singer Kele Okereke imbues every note, every shouted turn of phrase with something dangerously close to approachability. His urgent, Mike Skinner-accented eruptions of rhythmic vocal acuity create an intimacy that glossy acts like The Killers can’t hope to duplicate.