Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke has introduced his sixth solo album, The Flames Pt. 2, due out March 24. Along with the information is a lead single, “Vandal,” the artwork for which options Kele burning a replica of the Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead.
“As a British born Nigerian, that debate has made me angry,” Kele says in an announcement. “It has felt like for these last few years I have been carrying around a lot of that anger, so with ‘Vandal’ I felt I needed to put it somewhere useful.”
Kele provides: “There haven’t been many things that have made me feel proud to be British recently but watching those people in Bristol pulling down the Colston statue made me feel immensely proud. It was ordinary people saying ‘no, this slaver does not represent my Britain.’ It was an act of defiance that I understood and I suddenly got a glimpse of a Britain I could believe in.”
Listen to “Vandal” beneath.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Never Have I Ever”
02 “Reckless”
03 “And He Never Was The Same Again”
04 “True Love Knows No Death”
05 “Vandal”
06 “Her Darkest Hour”
07 “No Risk No Reward”
08 “Someone To Make Me Laugh”
09 “I’m In Love With An Outline”
10 “Acting On A Hunch”
11 “Kerosene”
12 “The Colour Of Dying Flame”
The Flames Pt. 2 is out 3/24 through KOLA Records / !K7.