Kele/ The Boxer

Kele
The Boxer
(Universal Music Group)

So Kele is going it alone. No longer Kele from the Bloc. A Party pooper if you will. (OK, I’ll stop now). While the band goes on hiatus for an unspecified period, Kele, never one to rest on his laurels, has produced his first solo album ‘The Boxer’.
‘Walk Talk’ kicks off ‘The Boxer’ with U.S Army style chants juxtaposed with what sounds like a buzz saw - things aren't starting well. Still there’s 9 more tracks to go, things will surely improve.... or at least maybe they will after ‘On The Lam’; another track of effects, this time with a vocal that actually sounds more like the heroically average R&B singing you’d expect from the X Factor than the singer of art-rock stalwarts Bloc Party.
Struggling onwards, first single ‘Tenderoni' sounds like Depeche Mode on a bad day, with Kele doing a rather good impersonation of Dave Gahan. In fact, it's not until the seventh track ‘Unholy Thoughts’ that I hear a song that's actually up to the standard I would expect - and it’s telling that this particular song sounds a bit like, well, Bloc Party.
In general there are so many synth effects and vocal filters that ‘The Boxer’ sounds like a remix album, something you might get for free in a double CD special. Ultimately I’m left with the conclusion that Kele needs his band mates to keep him from going off track in a magnificent display of self-indulgence. With them we get Bloc Party, without them we get this.