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Apparently Bloc Party are big Radiohead fans, in more ways than one. They’ve adopted the online-album download paradigm that so famously sold huge for last year’s In Rainbows, along with the same piracy-dodging last-minute album announcement. But business aside, they’ve also paralelled their art rocker cousins’ penchant for dabbling with programmed rhythms and sampling. Not that Radiohead has a lockdown on pre-built drums, but there’s a clear departure from the sparse-and-spiky guitar attack of Silent Alarm that smacks of Kid A influences. Personally, it would make no difference to me if they went all-glockenspiel so long as the songs were more hummable than Weekend’s lackluster effort. And that’s where Intimacy shines – nearly every track has sing-along potential. Lead single “Mercury” is a nice encapsulation of the new album, all sampled voices, stacking layers of programming, distressing filter effects, and a chaotic free jazz finale. This along with “Ares” and “Trojan Horse” prove Bloc Party has an acumen for leaving on a high note, crashing to a frenetic close and leaving you wanting more. There are a couple lyrical stumbles throughout, but overall, the album is fast-moving, dripping with hooks, and gets better as you progress through the tracklist. They even find time to rediscover their stringed instruments on the killers “Halo” and “One Month Off,” the latter viciously warning, “I can be as cruel as you/ Fighting fire with firewood.” If only more so-called “break-up albums” could be this much fun.