At the TLA on Tuesday night, the assembled crowd witnessed a band at the peak of their powers. Bloc Party, the British foursome with two solid albums to their credit (2005’s superior Silent Alarm and 2007’s solid A Weekend in the City) gave a transcendent, 16-song performance that earned the crowd’s raucous reaction and made their two encores totally acceptable (a bit ostentatious for a mid-weekend if you ask me, but what the heck?). They also gave their fans an extra added bonus by choosing as their openers their fellow UK natives, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, four up-and-coming lads who offered a set that was never less than interesting, and often threatened to be revelatory.

Not that you could tell it by the fans.

The dance-punk collective, made up of singer/multi-instrumentalist Morgan Quaintance, singer/bassist James Rushent, drummer Rob Bloomfield, and keyboardist Dan Coop, churned out a nine-song menu of blaring rockers for the assembled masses, showcasing the magnetic frontman skills of Quaintance and some of the wackiest keyboards I’d heard since…well, since I listened to Pink Floyd’s Animals on the way to the show. Highlights of the show included “We Are Rockstars,” which featured a nifty little cowbell breakdown that had a beer-sodden creep near the wife and I yelling like Christopher Walken in that old SNL skit, and the extremely catchy “Let’s Make Out,” which featured some more oddball synth, and Rushent yelling like a maniac for a memorable chorus that, if I have this correct, read “let’s make out/let’s make out/let’s make out/let's make out.” The band consistently displayed a tendency to start songs off with challenging bits of noise construction, only to turn the tunes into tightly wound funk freakouts. In fact, some of their most effective songs were either completely instrumental or substituted robotic vocal atmospherics for actual words (or maybe the sound was just shitty?). The best examples were “Attack of the 60 Ft. Lesbian Octopus,” a huge rocker featuring kooky keys, crashing cymbals, and surf guitar that could not have lasted more than two minutes, and the closer, which I can only assume is called “Epic Last Song,” but I could be wrong. Whatever the name of the song, the thing featured a monster riff and a synthesizer effect that vibrated the room so much, it actually gave me indigestion. For some reason, I thought that was really great.

Sounds pretty good, right? Well, not for this crowd. The scarce folks assembled, who seemed to be there for no other reason than to stake out a good spot for their heroes, hardly moved. Apathy is one thing. But even that was not enough for these hosers. Despite the fact that the openers had took the stage on time, played a very fine group of songs, worked continuously to engage the crowd, and even went out of their way to show respect to their headliners (Rushent sported a Bloc Party T-Shirt), some members of the crowd still saw fit to repeatedly chant “Bloc Party” in the middle of their set like it was a battle of the bands. One unruly customer even called for “last song” during a quiet moment. The set was not without its drawbacks. The sound on the mics was horrible. Sometimes it was hard to tell if Quaintance was talking to the crowd or if his ramblings were part of a song. He couldn’t have been less understood if he was a drunken immigrant ordering at Geno’s in his native dialect. And yes, the nine-song duration of their set may have been a tad lengthy. But since when was it a bad thing to hear an intriguing, buzz band play longer? It isn’t like Bloc Party is going to pack up their gear and head home because the comma-and-question-mark guys decided to play an extra five minutes. But I suppose this sort of behavior is to be expected when people come to a concert not to be exposed to new music, but to hear the song from the Guitar Hero game. Here’s a tip to any frat boy loser who is currently reading this and contemplating buying tickets to a rock concert: If you don’t want to experience the opener, come late. But if you choose to claim real estate, keep your mouth shut and let the band decide when they are going to leave the stage, huh?

Anyhoo…Bloc Party. This band came ready to play. When lead singer Kele Okereke, who wore a Barack Obama shirt during the band’s recent gig at Lollapalooza in Chicago, took the stage, he was wearing a vintage T that featured perhaps the only person currently cooler than the charismatic Democratic Presidential candidate: The Dark Knight, himself. And the set his band – drummer Matt Tong, guitarist Russell Lissack, and some dude named Daniel on bass (regular bass player Gordon Moakes was home “squirting out babies” – Tong’s words) – played may just be the only thing capable of bringing Heath Ledger back from the dead. Thinking back on it, I should have known that they were going to do something special when some chick in red denims and a wife-beater started doing calisthenics before the show started, but I still didn’t know that show opener “Waiting for the 7:18” would so reliably recreate the band’s consistently tight album sound. They exhibited their knack for huge choruses on the Silent Alarm anthem “Positive Tension.” Okereke captured the crowd with intense singing and rhythm guitar skills on “Hunting for Witches” and the soaring “This Modern Love.” Lissack dropped sledgehammer riffs on “The Prayer” and the crowd-pleasing “Banquet.” Hell, even Dude Named Daniel chipped in with tight basslines, intermittent keyboard duties and atmospheric backing vocals on several songs. As for Tong, whole theses could be written on his Neil Peart-meets-John Bonham kit work.

And judging from my notes, I am just the man to write it. By the end of the first song, I was writing “drummer” with three exclamation points. By the end of “Hunting for Witches,” I was showing him love for his “delicate cymbal work.” By the end of “This Modern Love,” the sixth song in their set, I had scribbled “better than Stewart Copeland?” As “Song for Clay (Disappear Here),” came to its conclusion, I was noticing that he was “now shirtless and exhibiting a nice patch of chest hair.” And when “The Pioneers” was reaching its denouement, I was considering how badly I would get beaten if I tried to get backstage to cut off a lock of his nice patch of chest hair. And by the way, I realize that I just wrote a full paragraph about the exploits of a kitminder, but if this guy isn’t the best percussionist working in music today, I’ll eat ?uestlove’s afro.

So yes, theirs was a great performance. It was so compelling that it wasn’t even ruined by the horrific body odor oozing from the great unwashed or the obligatory bong light-up that took place toward the end of the non-encore setlist. But I am an angry, frustrated human being, so of course I have some complaints. First, Okereke talked too much. He had some sort of chatter between every song and each line he spouted seemed to end with the word “Philadelphia,” as if he was trying to remember where he was at. And all the talking opened him up to some comments I resented such as when he told the crowd to “throw their cheesesteaks in the air” (why not “throw your Declarations of Independence in the air?”) or when he implored the crowd to be louder because he had come to the city “expecting Killadelphia.”

One more gripe: It almost seemed like Okereke was trying to be too ingratiating. From the repeated Philadelphia caterwauling to the easy Batman shirt to the crowd surfing during “She’s Hearing Voices,” (although Okereke had a stage hand take off his fat gold chain before joining the paying customers; perhaps he though he was in “Stealadelphia?”), he almost had a vibe of being too eager to please. This being said, I didn’t exactly go there to hear Ryan Adams cover Metal Machine Music, and by the time they gave the fans what they wanted in the Guitar Hero jam (“Helicopter”), I was completely won over. Hell, if Lissack had performed the song’s riff in the video game's setting, he not only would have nailed a perfect score, he would have kicked Slash in the balls and decapitated him with his six-string.

My nit-picking aside, Bloc Party put on an incredible performance on Tuesday night, one that would have had me running to a soulless big-box store to purchase the whole of their discography if I wasn’t already a certified fanboy. As for Does It Offend You, Yeah?, don’t listen to the douchebags at the concert who wanted them run out on a rail. Check them out, because unlike those drunken wasters, this band has potential.

Image Credit: Flickr user alterna2