Kele

I got into Bloc Party around 2005, which means I spent the next few years with Silent Alarm on constant rotation. Kele’s voice had this quality that made you feel like you were hearing something he wasn’t supposed to let you hear—all that trembling intensity, the way anxiety could sound like melody. It confirmed what you already knew about yourself: that you were thinking too much, that other people were drowning in the same unnamed dread.

The band moved on to other things, as bands do. Most artists nail one perfect thing and that becomes the thing they can’t escape. For me it’s that combination of melody and tremor, the sound of a specific kind of thinking I don’t quite have access to anymore.