ARTiST: Biffy Clyro
TiTLE: Puzzle
LABEL: 14th Floor
GENRE: Rock
TiME: 49:53 min
SiZE: 70,3 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Jun-01-2007
RELEASE DATE: Jun-04-2007
WEBSiTE: http://www.biffyclyro.com
Track List:
01. Living Is A Problem Because Everything 05:19
Dies
02. Saturday Superhouse 03:19
03. Who's Got A Match 02:23
04. As Dust Dances 05:37
05. A Whole Child Ago 03:08
06. The Conversation Is... 03:41
07. Now I'm Everyone 03:51
08. Semi Mental__4 15ths 04:07
09. Love Has A Diameter 03:54
10. Get Fucked Stud 03:37
11. Folding Stars 04:15
12. 9 15ths 02:46
13. Machines 03:56
Release Notes:
Biffy Clyro: Puzzle
Out: 04/06/2007
Label: 14th Floor Records
"Take a long hard look at yourself, how did you end
up here?" sings Simon Neil on 'Folding Stars', and
you can almost hear the knives being drawn against
them. Since the tail end of 2006 when everyone had
their first taste of Puzzle through first single
æsemi-mentalÆ, a fierce debate has raged over the
status of Biffy Clyro, and depending on which post
in which thread on which forum you read, their
fourth album is either their greatest effort yet or
a steaming turd of a record made by a bunch of sell
-outs.
It's actually neither, although it's closer to the
former. It is a different approach to the previous
three long-players though; a pop album, plain and
simple, cutting back on the complicated stop-start
song structures which have helped them earn their
name, and with the screaming ferocity of some of
their previous work removed to make way for big dumb
chunks of rock. But this is not the sound of a
different band altogether, merely the sound of Biffy
Clyro simplified, the general feel retained but with
a lot of the challenge removed - there's something
almost predictable about a lot of Puzzle's songs,
with standard signatures where there might
previously have been a few twists and turns.
It's all a little odd for a band who have always
maintained an air of unpredictability, but where the
songwriting has taken a step towards the simplistic
the sound itself has become arena-sized. Opener
'Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies' begins
with a building, spiralling wall of strings, falling
away at their peak to leave just the chug of a
single, picked guitar note before returning with
pounding drums, initially staccato, stabbing at
random like bolts of lightening before building up
to a second crescendo that again falls away to make
way for a sinister choral accompaniment until the
vocals kick in.
ItÆs epic, massive and a little bit The Omen, and
itÆs a theme which pops up throughout the album. At
the conclusion of a couple of the tracks lie two
brief piano pieces, '2/15ths' and '4/15ths' - the
former set over some faintly-sinister discordant
backing noises, the latter twinkling and accompanied
by gentle vocals - both leading up to '9/15ths', a
pounding, apocalyptic SOS which heralds the return
of the choral section. The strings are back, too.
Puzzle is the Biffy of old going a bit Muse, and
it's highly impressive.
Or is it Biffy doing campfire-singalong-slash-bed-
wetting-indie stadium rock? Some of the songs here
are so join-the-dots simple that they're almost pale
with malnourishment. Album closer 'Machines' is some
inoffensive unplugged strumming whilst 'The
Conversation Is..' meanwhile.. well, we'll get to
that track in a minute. There are some rather naff
group vocals in the chorus of 'Whole Child Ago', and
ditto for various points in 'Who's Got A
Match','which also wins the prize for Puzzle's least
impressive lyric: "The midget is frigid, I put it to
you?" What. The. Funk.
There is one point where both old and new styles
meet in a bout of sheer confusion. The
aforementioned "The Conversation Is.." begins
twisting and turning in the verses, but when the
easy-on-the-ear choruses hit a second line of vocals
appear, gentle and a few octaves higher. It sounds
like it was written for them by a particular
stadium-rocking, Spiderman-soundtracking indie
quintet, and whilst it's the kind of thing that
makes radio pluggers soil themselves with delight,
it does sound a little uninspired after a while.
Yet despite the slightly schizophrenic approach,
Puzzle remains an above average album, and whilst it
might not sound as complete as Infinity Land - or as
good as the other two Biffy long-players - itÆll
work well as a crossover album despite its faults.
Biffy Clyro have the potential to make a brilliant
album full of super-accessible numbers, but this
just isn't it. Where and when Puzzle falls down it's
not because it's a less taxing album than the
others, but because some of the songs simply aren't
what they could be.
If Puzzle was more like its opening track and less
like its last, I'd be joining the fanboys in
proclaiming this the Best Thing Ever. Instead, IÆm
almost having to toss a coin to work out whether
this review concludes with six little red numbers or
seven.
Ultimately, your opinion of Puzzle will boil down to
what you wanted from Biffy Clyro in the first place
û if you bought their albums but only ever took to
the singles, there's a good chance that you'll be as
pleased with this as you were with the others. Yet
if you appreciated them more for the sheer confusion
generated by 'Toys, Toys, Toys, Choke, Toys, Toys,
Toys', for their quirky song structures and raw
power, this will seem a less fulfilling prospect.