“Breezeblocks” by Alt J

"Breezeblocks" was the second single from Alt-J's debut album An Awesome Wave, released on 18 May 2012. Joe Newman, Gus Unger-Hamilton, Gwil Sainsbury and Thom Green wrote it, and Charlie Andrew produced, keeping everything spare and clipped: brittle guitar, skittering drums and Newman's odd, nasal croon folding the words in on themselves.

The seed was a warning label on an aerosol can, whose hedge about possibly containing something flammable turned into a line in the refrain. Newman has said the song is about wanting someone so badly that you want to hurt yourself and them too, and like the rest of the album it borrows from Where the Wild Things Are, the 1963 children's book. It went top ten on the UK Indie and US Alternative charts and came third in Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2012.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.