The New Bloc Party single dropped last night.
If you are the kind of person who follows this kind of stuff, you know that over the weekend a bunch of British music sites launched a countdown that led to the unweiling of “Mercury” on BBC Radio One and British TV.
Which, naturally, was followed, minutes later by the unveiling of the official video on YouTube.
Technology, how we love you.

The record is pretty similar (you have Kele’s voice in there in its rythmic semi-screams so that pretty much makes it a standard Bloc Party song) yet different (a little more agressive, a little (even) more spare) from the band’s previous output (in my mind nothing will ever beat “Two More Years”) and carries, surprise, surprise, heavy political undertones, which makes it perfect to post on a DC-base blog.

Stereogum dutifully reports:

if you remember Kele’s beef with Jack White, he will not just entertain without getting provocative because that would just be “complicit with capitalist society.” And so the refrain lyric “Mercury’s in retrograde,” which is astrological speak for “everything’s going to shit,” is demonstrated video-wise by images suggesting the White House is possessed by a politically demonic Frankenstein type creature that is beholden to omniscient, crystal-ball toting, videogame loving apes who love to fight wars over bananas because they are crazy and uncaring and really love bananas. You might further argue that this was probably too literal a reading of the video but I failed out of Metaphors and Subtext in college, sorry.

Enjoy your inner monkey here:

And if you choose to be part of the capitalist simian society and purchase this single or the box containting it (according to Pitchfork the song may or may not be on the 3rd album), OF COURSE you can do that, right here.

In the meantime just listen to this instead:

Better, yes? YES!

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