Horn, tracklist and store gigs lock in Bloc Party’s seventh

Bloc Party have set out the full shape of their seventh studio album, The Anatomy Of A Brief Romance, due on 11 September 2026 through new label cOnTAGIOUS LTD via Virgin Music Group. Produced by Trevor Horn, the fourteen-track record is structured as a chronological portrait of a year-long love affair, from first glances through to heartbreak, and contains some of frontman Kele Okereke’s most personal songs. The band say the lyrics are drawn directly from Okereke’s experience of ending a long-term relationship and beginning a new one.

When the 11 September date was first confirmed, formats and singles remained unlisted. Those details are now confirmed. The singles released ahead of the album are ‘Coming On Strong’, ‘Love Bombs’ and ‘Now We Can’t Be Friends’. A limited-edition signed vinyl is available through the band’s store.

Running order and the September in-stores

The tracklist runs in sequence: ‘22.01.22’, ‘Coming On Strong’, ‘Love Bombs’, ‘Pigwig’, ‘Lagoon Blue’, ‘Muscleworks’, ‘Clark Kent’, ‘Worst Birthday Ever’, ‘Not Your Problem’, ‘Now We Can’t Be Friends’, ‘Rotherhithe’, ‘Stories’, ‘Moving On’ and ‘Eulogy’. The dating of the opener and the arc implied by titles such as ‘Worst Birthday Ever’, ‘Now We Can’t Be Friends’, ‘Moving On’ and ‘Eulogy’ make the chronological design plain on paper before a note is heard.

A short series of UK record-store shows frames the release week. The band play Wax and Beans in Bury on 9 September and Rough Trade East in London on 15 September. With the album out on the Friday between those dates, the in-stores put the new songs in front of shop audiences at the moment the record lands, rather than months later on a conventional tour cycle.

Where the seventh sits

Bloc Party formed in London in 1999 around co-founders Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack. The present line-up also includes Louise Bartle and bassist Harry Deacon. Their music has always been rooted in rock while making room for electronica and house. The early EPs of 2004 and the singles that followed — among them ‘Banquet’ and ‘Helicopter’ — led into the debut album Silent Alarm in 2005, the record that fixed the band as a central British indie voice of that decade.

Later releases kept the catalogue active: the High Life EP and its related singles in 2023, the 2024 B-sides set drawn from A Weekend in the City, and the single ‘Flirting Again’ the same year all kept new music in circulation while this seventh album was prepared. The Anatomy Of A Brief Romance is the first Bloc Party album on cOnTAGIOUS LTD, and the first to be steered by Trevor Horn. For a group once defined by angular guitars and restless rhythm sections, Horn’s involvement underlines a turn toward songcraft built around a single emotional through-line, stated without disguise in the album’s title and running order.

What changes for listeners this week is simple: the concept is no longer a sketch; the producer, the fourteen titles, the three advance singles and the signed vinyl are all confirmed, and the Bury and London shop dates give the release an immediate live footing. The Anatomy Of A Brief Romance arrives on Friday. The in-store shows begin tomorrow.