Daily Download: "Like Eating Glass," Bloc Party, from "Silent Alarm"

Bloc Party is one of the most heavily hyped bands scheduled to perform at this year's SXSW festival. "Banquet," featured back in September on Wednesday Morning Download, was the song that got everybody excited about the band in the first place -- it was their "House of Jealous Lovers," their "Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard." It's a measure of just how good the band's full-length debut, "Silent Alarm," is that "Banquet" doesn't even particularly stand out among the record's 14 tracks. This is an all out, unrelenting adrenaline rush: Nearly every song sounds as though it's taken a few BPM faster than it's meant to be, but the result isn't so much frantic as exhilarating. Opener "Like Eating Glass," a thrilling combination of aggression and expansiveness, with a nifty Gang of Four-style beat reversal and a killer vocal entrance (note the perfect, stylized pause before the last word of the first phrase, "It's so cold in this house"), is my favorite song here. I'm thrilled that Vice gave Salon permission to post an exclusive download.