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Go to BlocParty.com and you'll find individual blogs from Kele Okereke, Matt Tong, Russell Lissack and Gordon Moakes, the four men who collectively embody one of the U.K.'s finest bands.
You will, however, learn little about the band's activities during 2007, a hectic year that has seen the long-anticipated release of a formal followup to 2005's brilliant Bloc Party debut album Silent Alarm, as well as a virtually non-stop voyage around the world that will finally bring the band to Ottawa for the first time Sunday.
That's because, of the four, only Moakes has updated his diary since summer 2006. (And even that entry is now six months old.) To check out Tong's page, by contrast, is to be transported to a time when the four musicians were actively "following the World Cup."
"Well, that was kind of a depressing experience," En-ger-land supporter Tong notes. "I probably should submit some more material, but it's hard to encapsulate what you're doing when you'd rather not be thinking about it."
Which is not to suggest these are hard times for Bloc Party. Far from it, in fact. With the entrancing A Weekend in the City, the flavour of 2005 has soundly beaten the challenge of the difficult second album -- a perception/reality that has felled many a British band whose first album had earned a similar level of acclaim.
"We were well aware of the so-called sophomore slump that seems to affect so many bands, but you can't do anything about it," Tong says. "You're never going to be blessed with the kind of hype there was surrounding you when you first came out.
"With the second record that's never gonna happen. We were a little bit nervous but we all knew that again we had made the best album we could have made under the circumstances.
"We were thankful so many people were excited about hearing new stuff. We thought the rest would look after itself."
And so it has with upbeat foottappers like Hunting for Witches, gentle ballads like Kreuzberg and epic anthems like Waiting for the 7:18, confirming to fans there is far more to Bloc Party than Silent Alarm. And, as with Silent Alarm, the songs of A Weekend in the City have been given a second life through remixes by a variety of invitees.
This time, even fans of the band have been given a chance to tamper with perfection, through a band-sponsored remix contest.
"I think as a band we're a lot more open-minded now when it comes to actually arranging our songs," Tong says of what Bloc Party has gained from the remix projects. "There's always more than one way of attacking a song, and it's been interesting listening to people's renderings of our work.
"It's can't be easy, because especially on A Weekend in the City, some of the songs sound like they've been remixed anyway."
On stage the songs become something else altogether. And Bloc Party's live shows have become legendary.
Take, for instance, their recent Live Earth performance, notable not only for a fiery set but also for a widely reported incident that supposedly saw security personnel forbid Madonna from greeting the band backstage.
"Yeah, well, we might have bent the truth a little bit about that," Tong now admits. "Actually, I think that whole story was completely made up, really. We were shocked when we saw how much that got all over the Internet. We were like, 'Uh oh, she's going to sue us now.'
"Really, our experience with that kind of level of stardom have been really limited. We do rub shoulders with those people from time to time but it seems so weird to us. It seems so alien that we always make up these ridiculous stories, not expecting anyone to believe us for one minute. But then, people don't really know what happens, I suppose."
True. But perhaps we would if you updated that blog occasionally.