'That's what Britain means to me, a constant sense of menace and nasty violence and animosity towards people who are different .' Kele Okereke, the son of Nigerian Catholic immigrants to the outer London suburbs and lead singer of Bloc Party, may not ever get a job with the British Tourist Authority, but he is one of the most political voices of his musical generation. He tells Jim Carrollwhy most British indie bands have nothing to say and why Big Brother stinks

THERE is nothing like a rehearsal studio on a wet Tuesday afternoon to make a band realise their chosen vocation isn't all glamour. In this north London building hang framed photos of Leo Sayer, The Police and Rush, reminders of the greats who have scurried through these corridors.

In one studio, Razorlight are relearning their songs and that riff from America echoes over and over again through the building. In the canteen, a band and crew are having a production meeting about the feasibility of having two drumkits on stage for their forthcoming tour. The largest roadie at the table doesn't think it's a good idea. Everyone frowns.

Bloc Party are also at work. Like the other bands here, they're preparing for a tour. Their second album is about to be released and they'll spend much of this year on the road. They know that they will have few opportunities to just stand around in a room and try out new ideas in the months to come, especially after their startling, honest, dark and furious new album is released.

Kele Okereke probably already knows that 2007 is going to be an eventful year. It is the lead singer's observations, anger and horror at British society that lie at the heart of A Weekend in the City. The urban alienation and menace that the singer sees all around him inform every part of the new album. It even feeds into the music. The band have departed from the jerky, jittery indie template which served them so well on their million-selling debut, Silent Alarm. Now there's a blur of dark electronics throughout, amplifying and accentuating Okereke's edgy sense of isolation.

That, he says between mouthfuls of sausage and mash, was how they wanted to sound last time out too. He certainly wasn't happy with how Silent Alarm ended up sounding.

"We really wanted to push the sound of this one wider," Okereke says. "Silent Alarm didn't meet up to the expectations we had for it while we were recording it. We wanted to reference lots of different types of music and we didn't achieve that. It now sounds quite tame. I suppose I'll be saying the same thing about this album in a year's time."

He attributes much of their new sound to Irish producer Garret "Jacknife" Lee, who has worked with U2 and Snow Patrol. "We picked him because he knew about both electronic music and rock music." Lee also brought them to Grouse Lodge Studios in Co Westmeath. "The record company didn't want us in London, too many distractions."

Yet London plays a defining role on the new album. "East London is a vampire/It sucks the joy right out of me" from the opening Song for Clay (Disappear Here) is one of many lines detailing Okereke's horror and frustration with modern inner-city life.

"A lot of that came from turning on the television, reading the newspapers or waiting to catch a train and feeling so angry all the time that you were constantly being spoken down to. It's a miserable existence. There's a real disparity between what was promised and what actually happened, and that dissatisfaction really comes out in the record."

Such directness is hugely at odds with the abstract lyrics which dominated the songs on Silent Alarm, acknowledges Okereke. "I was a lot younger when I wrote the songs and I suppose that's why they were so oblique. I didn't know any better. I didn't know how to express myself, I suppose. There certainly wasn't an element of waiting to have an element of success before I said how I felt about things. When you feel your voice is being marginalised in society, there is a sense of anger about that. I felt it was time to say what I saw directly."

Okereke doesn't fit into the cookie-cutter template of most indie band lead singers. He's the son of Nigerian immigrants who settled in London's exurbia, and his perspective is at odds with his peers. "I see the world very differently to how Razorlight or Kasabian see the world. I grew up in a Nigerian Catholic family and the life of a non-white person growing up in the UK is so different to the background of most white middle-class indie singers."

His reaction to this upbringing was the first of many defining moments for him. "It was a very strict fundamentalist Catholic upbringing. We went to church every Sunday and prayer meetings during the week. From an early age, I was questioning things and I was questioning how I related to my parents. I didn't value their faith, I didn't see the world in the way they saw it. It was a very disorientating time because I had to separate that life from what I was going through as a teenager with my friends."

He still feels like an outsider. The touring which followed Silent Alarm made him realise how homogenous popular culture has become.

"Everyone loves the same things, everyone listens to the same bands, everyone dresses in the same way. It seems there is a very universal fund of ideas that people draw from in terms of music and fashion at the expense of individuality. I find that frightening and conservative. No one wants to stand out as an individual. Life is scary and traumatic so rather than stand up to that, people choose to blend in and be part of a group."

Okereke sees a similar malaise in the bands around him. "I don't think many British guitar bands are any good. I've always thought that. Not one of the bands which people think of as our peers have impressed me. They don't have any character or personality. They're all complicit with this notion that their job is just to sell records or appear on Saturday night TV shows or do photo-shoots at 10 Downing Street. It's completely fake."

He believe that an industry-wide deception is to blame for this. "Bands get elevated so quickly because there's this post-imperial zest in the British music industry to elevate bands to unrealistic heights. Everything is about selling records, and bands will do anything and say anything to achieve that aim. Indie music has become so professional. It's about being an entertainer, being part of this deluge of noise. It should be more than that."

It's rare to hear a singer deconstruct the music business process so smartly and sharply. It's also obvious that Okereke is past caring what his peers think. He just wants to know where their anger has gone.

"All those hit songs by Oasis or Coldplay have this kind of collective euphoria to them. They're songs that everyone in the pub can feel part of. Since the 1980s, bands have abandoned the idea of having any sort of social slant to their music. People have become complacent and they have this hedonistic mindset when it comes to how they relate to life."

Listen to Where Is Home?, a song from the new album about a racial stabbing in a small town in Kent, and the flipside to that hedonistic cycle becomes clear. "That's what I was trying to convey. People work very hard all week to go out and get fucked up at the weekend and then go back to work again. That's what life has become. That, to me, is really frightening, and I'm amazed that more people aren't worried by this. People can only relate to leisure in terms of activities that steal experience from them."

But talk to Okereke about how widespread homophobia is in British society, a topic which is projected in some of his lyrics, and he clams up. It's a reaction to a recent interview with the Observer, when the singer was asked about his own sexuality in the light of the lyrics to I Still Remember and Kreuzberg. Okereke talked about how these songs, the former about "the idea of two straight boys having an attraction, or there being an attraction that's unspeakable", were partially autobiograhical.

Today he goes silent when a question is asked about the lyrics in the context of what he has just been saying about British society. "I've said everything I want to say about that," is his only comment on the record.

Later, when the tape-recorder is turned off, he apologises for not answering the question. He feels too much about his personal life has been read into that interview and he is not prepared to talk about it over and over again. It's the same, he says, as that question of being a black singer in an indie band which came up repeatedly in old interviews.

You can understand his hesitancy given the bland, conformist nature of the modern indie scene. Yet it is a subject which will crop up in many more interviews with Okereke this year, especially given the overall themes of A Weekend in the City and how openly and bravely he articulates his other feelings on the country he calls home. The Britain you will experience on the album is a spiritless, gloomy, depressing place.

"That's what Britain means to me, a constant sense of menace and nasty violence and animosity towards people who are different. When I think of Britain, I don't think of these lofty ideals which once held sway like the stoic upper lip. I think of girls on a Saturday night outside kebab shops stabbing each other with stiletto heels or guys smashing glasses into someone's face. I think of shows like Big Brother, which celebrate people's discomfort and anguish, or kids committing these terrifying happy-slapping acts of brutality to each other at the drop of a hat."

Okereke takes a deep breath. The reluctant, taciturn frontman who was sent out to talk up Silent Alarm in 2005 has gone. This time around, the singer is animated, vibrant, thoughtful and fired up. This time he is happy to face each interviewer alone without needing moral support from a band-mate.

"I guess I have so much to explain about this record," he says. "The anger on it comes from me, so it's only fair on the others that I talk about it. Of course, I'd rather people listened to the record than focus on my personality."

The likable young man whose world is about to be turned upside down in the coming months pauses for a moment and smiles. "You know, I'll probably never say anything as interesting in interviews as what my records will say."

A Weekend in the City is released on February 2nd. Bloc Party play Dublin's Ambassador on February 16th