Bloc Party is one of the few bands that has released a strong debut CD, albeit a little bland and uniform, that was topped by a subsequent remix album. That’s right, “Silent Alarm” has been a frequent choice on my iTunes collection, but “Silent Alarm Remixed” has been even more so. The first album was sonically sparse and beat-heavy, putting Bloc Party squarely in the vague category of “indie dance pop,” populated by other bands like Franz Ferdinand (who was actually responsible for Bloc Party’s initial rise from garage-band status).

The music was catchy, and the band was on the cusp of transcending indie obscurity — NME named “Silent Alarm” the 2005 Album of the Year, for example — but that transcendence has only taken place in Britain so far. They are still relatively unknown in the States. The band’s accessibility on its prior effort was a key selling point, as the simplistic and clean guitars were a marked difference from bands like Interpol and Maximo Park. The fact that “Silent Alarm Remixed” is better than the original suggests the band’s original creative effort might work better in the electronic realm. M83, Mogwai, Four Tet and others all contributed remixes.

“A Weekend in the City” is the band’s attempt to move their music away from fast-paced repetitive guitar-and-drum-work in order to create a more expansive sound. The band is trying hard to achieve something significant and serious — as they do so, they actually head back in the direction of Interpol (and maybe Radiohead) and away from Franz Ferdinand. Tackling more serious material, both musically and lyrically, should enhance and expand their staying power outside of the British rock and American indie music scenes.

The first song, “Song For Clay (Disappear Here)” makes it clear this remix album will offer a complexity lacking from the first. This is not a repetition of “Banquet” — the band’s most well-known single from “Silent Alarm” — but instead a melodic introduction leading into a much softer and muted main section, the drumbeat far off in the background rather than at the forefront (as it was for much of “Silent Alarm”). While the influence of their previous CD is clear, especially in the newest single, “The Prayer” — which might be the weakest song on the album — as well as “Hunting for Witches,” most tunes move past the prior simplicity into a fuller complexity, especially the tracks “On” and “Uniform.” The album starts to lose its momentum, though, as it progresses - the second half doesn’t quite have the creative vitality of the first.

Bloc Party visits San Francisco on March 17 (thankfully without Panic! At the Disco, who they were previously slated to open for), and it will be interesting to see how these songs work at a live performance. It’s unlikely many of them will come off well ... the tools available in the studio certainly add a lot to each track, which these days is a necessary evil.

That being said, the album is a worthwhile improvement on “Silent Alarm.” The earlier release, while a good listen, had only limited mileage in terms of repeat listens, whereas the remix album had slightly more. But “A Weekend in the City,” for all its flaws, is something that could, and should, be listened to several (or many) times over in order for the listener to fully appreciate its complexity.