What has happened to London's most beloved, platinum-selling purveyors of sentimental, dancefloor indie?
Well, according to Bloc Party, the band is on hiatus, providing perfect opportunity for its members to stretch their legs (and maybe even spread their wings) for a little bit.
This rest seems well-deserved - years of relentless touring and meticulous studio production appeared to have taken their toll when, last October, the group cancelled the gig at Newport Centre I had planned to attend, following the release of the generally underwhelming third album "Intimacy".
By the time I saw them, that summer, headlining Friday night's Glastonbury Other Stage, they were full as ever of adrenaline, charismatic frontman Kele Okereke was talkative, mischievous and ballsy - it was a performance to savour, as the band drowned a legion of adolescent and young-at-heart followers in a sound which banished headliner Neil Young's over-the-hill pretentions from the mind.
But there was something that irritated, that sense that Bloc Party's identity was slipping away from them; there were very few fans that night who were pleased to see the appearance of "Intimacy" tracks "Signs" and "Zephyrus" ahead of seminal classics such as "Like Eating Glass"; Kele, for all his humorous confidence, had lost that adorable stutter which so brilliantly polarised his image from his music; yet we were bored of "Helicopter", north to south, our hearts were empty.
Bloc Party had exhausted itself, as became even more evident at the conclusion of the "Bloctober" they appeared to have to drag themselves through, tutting and moaning, squealing and squelching.
So we now look in other directions for our tense, danceable indie rock kicks.
So what of said "charismatic frontman" then? Well, while Bloc Party might as well be dead for the time being (and it appears as if it would take feats of necromantic proportions to arise them from their slumber, at present), there is a new Kele Okereke alive and fighting - or punching, should I say, given the title of his debut solo album "The Boxer".
Due for release in July, the album promises to live up to its name, packing the dancefloor body blows in plentitude, but any expecting a recycled Bloc Party re-hash would be falling for a sucker punch.
Produced by Spankrock's XXXchange in his Brooklyn, NY bedroom, over the course of four months around Christmas, "The Boxer" offers an edition in the key of "Flux" or "Mercury" but even more dead-set in clubdance cement.
Prior to Bloc Party's exhaustion, there had been signs that Kele was eager to produce an all-out dance record - after all, one of the early Bloc Party's most appealing traits was its capacity to reduce snotty schoolboy hipsters to hand-waving, foot-stamping lunacy - and here it is.
Promotional single "Tenderoni" is a hard track for those, like me, yearning for Telecaster Kele, to get into, but there is merit in its sad madness - in fact, it seems certain to dominate London dancefloors at least for a while.
It would be brutal to denounce this a fall from grace for Okereke; his talents have simply proven to be more diverse, his indulgences more varied, than weeping Blocheads would like.
With the release of "The Boxer", Kele will have become a more complete artist than he was before, and it is impossible for those who worshipped him so unreservedly for the half the decade to put him down for his reinvention. The 2000's having ended, things have to change; Bloc Party had been stuck in the stomach of an industry monster that was slowly bleeding to death, but now their shining beacon of godlike, African-British genius and light has been mercifully regurgitated - so let's not treat him like vomit.
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