Bloc Party

For a breakup album, Bloc Party don't seem to have lost any of their groove. While gloomier and more dissonant than previous efforts, Intimacy is worthier of club floors. Sounding more like the Chemical Brothers than the Cure, their use of stuttered speech samples, drum 'n' bass beats, electro horns and echoey effects work well with their spastic rhythms and distorted guitars. But, with Kele Okereke's whoops and hollers often sounding like they're being transmitted through a robot, the band may have gotten a little too electro for an album claiming to be "intimate."