Marcel Winatschek

What Kele Wanted

"Everything You Wanted" is the third track on Kele Okereke’s debut solo album The Boxer, and it sounds like exactly what it is: a Bloc Party frontman giving himself permission to stop being a Bloc Party frontman. The guitars are mostly gone. In their place, a clean electronic architecture—sparse and deliberate—built around his voice in a way that Bloc Party’s dense post-punk arrangements never quite allowed. A quieter kind of ambition than the band, which is not the same thing as a lesser one.