If you’ve been keeping up with your tweets in recent weeks, you’ll be well aware of a trickle of new albums on the horizon from some very familiar names. So familiar, in fact, the 2012 new release list could just as well be for 2009. A wave of reunion-esque albums are on their way, as band members who have flown the coop trying to make it en seule seem to be quietly sneaking back to their roots. I’m lookin’ at you, Kele Okereke.

Bloc Party are not the only ones making us do a double-take. After a year of scattered side-projects, Hot Chip have announced that they are putting the finishing touches on a new album too.

Both groups have experienced a pretty substantial diaspora since their last release (Hot Chip’s ‘One Life Stand’ [2010] and Bloc Party’s ‘Intimacy’ [2009]). For me, solo projects from well-known bands will always be tainted by the irresistible urge to compare. Does the same thing happen when they go back to their old bands? Did we all listen to ‘The King of Limbs’ and hear little bits of Thom Yorke’s ‘The Eraser’?

What about from the band’s perspective? It’s kind of like moving out of your parents’ house for the first time… then realising that your rent money comes directly out of your party funds, and that the cockroaches aren’t actually helping you with the washing up. When you move back in (yep, it has to happen), the taste of home-cooked anything-other-than-mi-goreng will be comforting. But there ain’t no way you’re compromising your privacy. Coming back to a band after being in charge of all your own creative choices has got to be a shock. What will the impact be on their sound? And do we still care like we did two years ago?

Having a closer look at the Chip and the Party, let’s have a think through why we should care…

BLOC PARTY

Kele left the Bloc to pursue what was heralded as ‘the record he’d always wanted to make’. The Boxer was a whole heartedly electronic experiment, embracing a far wider scope of techno, synth and experimental beats than Bloc Party ever did. Vocally, Kele’s trademark sincerity comes through just as strongly – if not stronger – on his solo work, albeit dabbling in more pitch alteration and effects. That lyrical honesty and emotion was what made some of the early Bloc Party tracks so powerful – but it’s also what made their later releases feel increasingly tired. The biggest downfall of their last album ‘Intimacy’ (2009) may ironically have been its intimacy – in the form of over-earnest, bordering-awkward emotion. Will that be the hallmark of the new Bloc Party album as well? It seems like a good time for the band to refocus on the party, not just the hangover. If they take Kele’s willingness to experiment and ditch the serious face, this could be an album to watch.

HOT CHIP

What a feast of side-projects! Joe Goddard went down a path of soulful house with 2 Bears, teaming up with Greco Roman Soundsystem’s Raf Rundell. Alexis Taylor went in virtually the other direction with About Group, drawing on improvisation, wonky beats, wah-wah guitars and Beatles ballad vocals. And Al Doyle and Felix Martin have put out their own project, New Build, which embraces funky basslines and badass 80s synths. It’s quite plausible to think of these projects as the various extremes of Hot Chip. Perhaps reeling the members back in will not have too much of an influence on their sound, then. But have people already moved on? With all these intriguing new projects, will Hot Chip simply become the side-dish? (Yep, went there.)

Maybe it’s just me, but my affection for dance bands still hasn’t recovered from the LCD Soundsystem split. (Note to Al Doyle: if you’d given me an LCD reunion, this post would probably be entirely different. #hypocrisy)

The hardest part for these guys will probably be getting people to really care again, which might mean trying something entirely new. At any rate, it seems important (and perhaps inevitable) for both to incorporate their solo experiments into the band’s sound in some way. Potentially amazing – potentially a mess. Thoughts?

– Beth (FBI Radio)