Despite weak supporting acts, Bloc Party solid in tour opener

In Britain, there's a new rock sensation every other week.

And sometimes, they're more than just a flash in the pan.

Kele Okereke, lead singer of Bloc Party, has what it takes to have a lasting career. And his band was much more impressive in person that it is on its recordings.

Opening its first major American tour Sunday night at the Paramount, Bloc Party did its homeland proud. In the great English rock tradition, the four-man band was tight and powerful, the sound was first rate and the show was flashy and professional.

Okereke is tall and handsome, and made even taller by a thicket of wild hair. The son of Nigerian Catholic immigrants, he sings of prejudice and frustrations, but with a smile on his face and often in danceable, almost celebratory rhythms.

The singer/guitarist and his band had the mosh pit lurching and swaying as one to the rhythms, and dancing broke out all over the place, even in the half-filled balcony.

Bloc Party opened with the rocking "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)," the opening cut from its new "A Weekend in the City," album, and featured most of the songs from the disc, including "Hunting for Witches," "I Still Remember" and the title cut.

Review

Sunday night, Paramount Theatre

The album is a lament for a London Okereke sees as run by corrupt cops and officials, and full of dangers. His lyrics are stark and poetic.

Songs from other CDs and EPs included "Blue Light," a slow, pleasant contrast to all the rockers, as well as "Positive Tension," "This Modern Love," "Like Eating Glass" and "Still Remember," which featured the band's excellent guitarist, Russell Lissack.

It was also Lissack's 26th birthday, so Okereke led the crowd in singing "Happy Birthday" to him.

Okereke played guitar pretty well, too, in "Silent Alarm" and "So Here We Are."

The Smoosh sisters were charming when they were little kids. The two local schoolgirls — a singer/keyboardist and a drummer — are still pretty young, but their cute act is wearing as thin as their songs.

Also underwhelming was Final Fantasy, a pop chamber duo made up of a singer/violinist and a woman who manipulated plastic sheets on an overhead projector, coordinating the resulting images — shown on a small, dirty sheet hung midstage — with the songs, which were even more evanescent that Smoosh's.

A line from one of Final Fantasy's song makes for a perfect review of their boring act: "Oh so pretentious."

Patrick MacDonald: 206-464-2312 or pmacdonald@seattletimes.com