As me and the wife are off to Glasgow for the bank holiday to see a couple of the best mates you could have the Milsky and Emilia, I thought what better way this week than to feature one of my favourite Scottish bands. Alongside, Belle and Sebastian, Idlewild, the View and Malcolm Middleton’s Arab stap; Biffy Clyro have been up there amongst my favourite Scottish bands of all time.
The 3 piece are from Kilmarnock and comprise of Simon Neil on vocals and guitar alongside twin brothers Ben and James Johnston on drum and bass, respectively. Formed in 95, known as Screwfish they toured for years with a much more grungier Nirvana sound, although they site their main influence as prog rock legends Rush.
It wasn’t until 2002, when the band released their debut album the fantastic ‘Blackened Sky’ which includes the awesome ‘Justboy’ and ‘57’ that catapulted them to a support slot with Weezer. ‘Joy.Discovery.Invention’ was then released as a double single with ‘...Toys, Choke, Toys...’ which appears on the bands second album ‘The Vertigo of Bliss’. Much more experimental than the debut it includes the introduction of a string section. Late to the party as usual, it was this album featuring ‘The Ideal Height’ and more specifically this track ‘Questions and Answers’ that had me on board as a fan, enjoy...
In 2005 the bands third album ‘Infinity Land’ was released featured the brilliant ‘Only One word comes to mind’ and in the same year the bands side project Marmaduke Duke also released their debut album.
By 2007 the bands popularity had grown massively, supporting the likes of the Who and the Rolling Stones. Later in the year came possibly my favourite album of the last decade, the critically acclaimed, mainstream breakthrough album ‘Puzzle’, the whole album is genius from start to finish and my stand out tracks have got to be ‘9/15ths’, ‘Saturday Superhouse’, ‘Machines’, ‘Semi Mental’ thru to the genius ‘Who’s got a match’ and my all time favourite Biffy track ‘Living is a problem..’.
Many pretentious fans view this album as a sell-out; however in my opinion its utter brilliance, yes it may use less complex song structures than previous work but it definitely retains unusual elements and the lyrics and subject are very dark, written after the death of Neil’s mother. The bridging track between ‘Puzzle’ and Biffy’s US breakthrough album was ‘Mountains’ released in 08, preceding the latest album.
Late 2009’s ‘Only Revolutions’ again, is widely criticised by many pretentious NME reading shoe gazers, in my opinion however, its brilliant. To understand this, a band must change sound as they develop and mature, by not branching out a bands sound will be deluted. Case in point – pushing their 40’s RHCP trying to play and even write similar music they wrote in their 20s, not cool. Biffy, however, still make brilliant, well structured music...which coincidentally is popular and not is in the same direction as a band like Kings of Leon or Muse went by sucking all the life from their once brilliant music and churning out meaningless, daytime radio drivel.
From the very start of the album ‘The Captain’ sets the tone for the album and ‘That Golden Rule’ sets the tempo thru to brilliantly structured pop tracks ‘Bubbles’, ‘Born on a Horse’ which brings us full circle to them being the composers of last year’s Christmas number 1 ‘Many of Horror’ (or whatever the Lord of anti-music Darth Cowell’s apprentice, Darth Cardell renamed it before he ate my soul and sh*t it out again).
Something New...
Brazilian funk electro band, CSS are hailed as pioneers of the Nu Rave explosion on the UK scene alongside the Klaxons.
*Random Fact of the week*
CSS is an abbreviation of Cansei de Ser Sexy, which literally means ‘tired of being sexy’ in Portuguese, and is allegedly a direct Beyonce quote.
CSS Hit the big time via the internet before signing to a label were they released their debut, self titled album which includes the awesome tracks ‘Alala’, ‘Music is my hot sex’, ‘Off tha Hook’ and the massive anthem ‘Let’s make love...’. Since they’re 2nd album ‘Donkey’ in 2008 which includes ‘Left behind’ and ‘Rate is dead’ wasn’t as successful they have been pretty quiet ever since. This had been sited due to band fatigue and the enigmatic front women Lovefoxxx, “didn’t like making music”...until now that is!
The bands 3rd album ‘La Liberación’ is due to land at the end of August this year and judging from the live snippets I’ve heard its gonna be a belter. Yes, they are back to their debut album best and yes rainbow jumpsuits are back! Stand out tracks being ‘City girl’, the B52-esque ‘Echo of Love’ and the superb ‘Hits me like a rock’ which is somewhere between reggae and Primal scream. So, until August I hope you enjoy this badly recorded Dillon Francis remix as a taster (purely as the sound is better than the live versions on youtube)...
Something Borrowed...
Commercial DnB legends Chase & Status maybe used to working alongside other artists on awesome tracks like ‘Pieces’ with Plan B, ‘Heavy’ featuring Dizzee Rascal and the genius ‘Hypest Hype’ with Tempa T and also remixing others work such as the Prodigy’s ‘Invaders must die’ but you won’t often catch them performing live ‘acoustic’ cover versions.
Featuring the sublime vocals of Delila (who also features on their latest single ‘Time') a brilliant cover of the Foo Fighter’s ‘Rope’ from a few weeks back - “Yeoooooow”...
Something Blue...
Australian psychedelic rock band, Tame Impala hail from Perth and maybe after sharing the same name as a meek antelope you wouldn't expect their music is bloody brilliant! Well your wrong cos in their own words they are "bringing the psychedelic grove back with a dream like melody”.
The track I've chosen for this weeks 'blue' is taken from the bands brilliant 2010 debut album 'Innerspeaker' which also includes the awesome 'Bold arrow of time' and 'Expectation', for me though its the truely epic single 'Solitude is bliss' that pips the rest by a long shot. Also just to spice it up a bit the brilliant video features a man randomly kicking a dog which was pointed out to me by the guy who 1st introduced the band to me...
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