Favourite Album: Infinity Land, Biffy Clyro

Greetings, dear reader. My name's Adam, I'm co-Hype Machine (or "Hype Engineer", as I'd prefer. I maintain the machine) for Offbeat and I'm going to tell you about my favourite album of all time. It's this:

This album is Infinity Land by the mighty Scots that are Biffy Clyro, my personal outright favourite band of all-time. Now I'm sure some of you will question this decision, due in no small part to the appearance of Many of Horror on X Factor. Frankly, it was a poor cover of an already not great song and I don't really criticise them for doing it but whatever, this isn't the place for a debate on the merits of X Factor.

I ask you, dear reader, to cast aside any doubts you have after that "incident", or the fact that Mountains may have been played at every "rock & indie night" you've been to for the past 2 years, or anything else that may have tainted your view of this excellent band. Instead, we're going on a journey back in time to two albums before these shenanigans. Following the perfectly executed quiet-loud dynamics of Blackened Sky and the pseudo-prog genius of The Vertigo of Bliss (complete with its mildly disturbing cover of a lady masturbating), the unusually named 3-piece from Ayrshire released an album that manages to incorporate elements of both, but sounds like neither. An album that features, among other things, an intro that sounds almost like it's been stolen from a dance act, a xylophone, a piano, a trumpet and an a capella track, and is named after a concept from a book written by infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Lovely.

Trying to explain why these tracks are so incredible is pretty difficult for me. I could tell you how every member's vocals are perfect, the guitars are exactly right in the mix (and with just the right amount of distortion when needed) and the absolutely solid back-line from the two Johnston brothers shows the kind of synchronicity you can only get from actually being twins, but that doesn't do it justice. I could tell you how the music changes from fast to slow and quiet to loud without sounding jarring or missing a beat, or how Simon's lyrics seem to alternate rapidly between life-affirmingly beautiful and head-scratchingly weird but that still wouldn't quite cover it. This, to me, is the Biffy album where everything just fits. It's more accessible than The Vertigo of Bliss, but without the mainstream feel of Puzzle and Only Revolutions that alienated some of the band's long-term fans. Most notably, it's got that element of weirdness that those two albums seemed to lack somewhat. This is arguably best shown by the double-header of There's No Such Man As Crasp and There's No Such Thing As A Jaggy Snake. The former is the aforementioned a capella track and serves as an extended intro for the latter; a swirling, convulsing beast of a song that changes tempo at the drop of a hat. It's ballsy, bonkers and absolutely brilliant. Elsewhere on the album, the magnificently titled Some Kind Of Wizard and The Kids From Kibble And The Fist Of Light provide more stop-start angular masterpieces. Wave Upon Wave Upon Wave handclaps its way joyfully through some of the darkest lyrics on the album to culminate in the wonderful repeated call of "do you believe in magic?". The slower The Atrocity and Got Wrong provide a welcome respite (and an insight into the developing songwriting skills of Simon Neil that would soon spawn massive hits Machines, Folding Stars and the previously mentioned Many Of Horror) following the quality opening trio of Glitter and Trauma, Strung To Your Ribcage and My Recovery Injection. It's also worth mentioning that the video for Glitter and Trauma is rather good. A tribute to the classic film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, it's the perfect match to what is a schizophrenic, explosive song. Watch the video (unfortunately backed by the "radio edit" of the song, which lacks the extended dance-y intro) here, and appreciate:

 

Now, wasn't that good? The album finishes with the slow, drawn-out Pause It and Turn It Up before a period of silence and a good old "hidden track". Better known as Tradition Feed to fans of the band, it's a poem read by Simon about mother shortly after her death, backed by some loud (I think) bagpipes. It's poignant, and rounds off the album nicely.

If pressed to pick my favourite song on the album, I'd pick one of two depending on my mood at that time. Strung To Your Ribcage is a fairly short and fairly loud song that thrashes around for a little over 2 and a half minutes, beginning with screaming and ending with pretty singing. Yeah, a lot happens. On another day, it'd be Only One Word Comes To Mind. One of the more subdued songs on the album, it's quiet and beautiful and features one of the best cymbal noises I've ever heard (0:41). I love both for totally different reasons, and that's probably what makes them my favourites on the album.

I've barely scratched the surface in talking about the music itself, and even if I carried on for pages I doubt I could. The easiest way for you to get a proper grasp on the album and to decide whether you like it or not is to listen to it, which I hope you do. What I can talk about, however, is my own personal attachment to it. I bought it in 2007 for £7 from HMV after hearing Saturday Superhouse (from the then-unreleased Puzzle) on MTV2 and enjoying it a lot. It was the cheapest Biffy album HMV had and, since they didn't have the album with the song I'd heard on it, I bought it. I remember sitting in the car and leafing through the booklet, fascinated by the ridged paper it was printed on (I was, and still am, a complete simpleton). Upon arriving back at home, I put the album into my CD player and Tony Hawk's Project 8 into my Playstation 2 and played the two simultaneously for the next few hours. My relationship with the Tony Hawk series was longstanding, but my love affair with Biffy was only just beginning. I repeated this activity several times until Infinity Land was firmly lodged in my head, but that wasn't enough. In the months following I sought out the band's previous two albums, pre-ordered Puzzle and saw the band live for the first time. The addiction had begun.

It's been over 4 years since then and the effect that one album has had on me is huge. Biffy were a break from the metal that dominated my music collection at the time, and served as a gateway to a whole different kind of music. It was only a matter of time before they became my favourite band, a title they still hold. So many things that I listen to now can be traced back to association with Biffy, and I'm hugely thankful for that. Everything I listen to that could come under the Offbeat umbrella of "indie/alternative" is arguably down to Biffy, so I suppose my membership of Offbeat can be traced back to this album. This band has been a huge presence in my life for several years, and not only did this album start that but I think it's their best musically. I hope you listen to it, and I really hope you enjoy it.

Infinity Land on Spotify

Favourite Album: Bloc Party, Silent Alarm

We all get them, those weird tingly moments when something about a song ticks all the right boxes - when it stops you dead and forces you to listen, to drink it in deep and savour it.  Well, that’s what I get every single time I hear ‘Like Eating Glass’, the opening track to Silent Alarm, my favourite album and, I would argue, one of the best albums of the last decade.  The band might have sullied their reputation somewhat with ill judged forays into dance in their later releases, but their debut album remains, much like Is This It, a musical landmark, both for myself and the world of ‘indie’ in general.

Sorry, that really is one hell of a pretentious an opening paragraph – I’m not really used to writing blogs like this so and have yet to develop a particular STYLE, so this might be a bit rambling and loose, for which I apologise.  I guess the difficulty comes from being asked to explain why a particular album is your favourite - what it is about it that makes it the one you reach for when at a loss for what to listen to, safe in the knowledge that you’ll enjoy it and take something from it each and every time, despite your mood or circumstance.  Music, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is such a deeply personal thing that it seems a bit distasteful to write about it in this way, especially as it’s an album I’ve grown up with (oh the stories it could tell, if it, you know, had eyes, and a mouth…which would be weird)

So why Silent Alarm? There will almost certainly be some reading this who detest the band, deriding them as Gang of Four knock-offs partly responsible for the strangehold that wiry, angular guitar music had on the ‘indie’ scenes in the mid Noughties (god what a horrible word – is that really what we’re going for now? ) But to think of the album in that light would do it a great disservice, as it is for my money one of the most assured, powerful and breathtaking debut albums ever made, although quite why I think that is hard to explain.  Much like Mr. Tume, my theoretical knowledge of music is practically non-existent, and although I’ve got a pretty good handle on what I like and why I like it, explaining it in terms other than ‘er…cos it’s well good’ is tough.
  

I’ll give it a shot though, and I guess the first thing that drew me to the band and this album in particular is the interplay between the drums (Matt Tong) and the bass (Gordon Moakes) – for example, the intro to ‘Positive Tension’ is just amazing, and every single song is pulled together by really tight and interweaving rhythms, with some amazing drums fills scattered throughout.  ‘Luno’ is another great example, driven by a really insistent bass line and topped with crashing drums and cymbals, it builds to an amazing climax and creates an atmosphere unlike any other band I know – perhaps the closest parallel would be Joy Division and their devotees/imitators Interpol (I’m on the devotee side of the debate, but I can see what people mean).  With such a solid backing, the two guitars have room to clamber and skitter all over the shop, creating some amazing textures that really fill out the songs – and I think that’s another reason why I love this album so much, is that it introduced me to a whole new world of guitar noises and sound effects etc. It sounds silly to say, but before I heard this album I was still stuck listening to Jet and The Offspring, thinking all guitars should be loud, brash, and simple – and the huge ranges of styles and ideas on Silent Alarm blew me away.  One minute you’re lost in the fast, jerky rhythms of ‘Banquet’, the next there’s lush synths and chords in ‘Blue Light’, and each of the 15 songs gives you a fresh idea, and basically gave me one hell of a good musical education.  I think that works in its favour as well, the fact that it’s 15 songs long makes me for a really absorbing experience, one that it’s difficult to get tired of because there’s always something new you haven’t noticed before – and its incredibly impressive that there’s not (I would argue) a single weak link or ‘filler’ song.   Sure, some of the tracks might be a little overshadowed by the ubiquity of ‘Helicopter’ or ‘Banquet’, but as a whole it stands together better than most other albums of this length – not overstaying its welcome but not leaving you feeling cheated either (cough The Vaccines cough).  It manages to combine indie disco floorfillers with softer, more introspective ‘solo’ listening experiences (‘Compliments’) without feeling disjointed or confused, which is pretty astounding, and to me the sign of a truly great band/album.

I don’t really know how else to describe how much I like the music, but I feel on much safer ground discussing the lyrics, seeing as I’m an English student (or was. Bloody hell.)  I think it’s the lyrics above all that make this my favourite album, and of course part of that is how well they gel with the music, the tone and the atmosphere created by everything else.  But they stand out in so many tracks as truly wonderful, and were such a revelation to me when I first discovered the album.  I could pick out hundreds of examples, but that would be not only a little boring for you reading this but might also kill some of the magic, by over-anaylsing or ruining that sense of surprise or discovery, so I’ll just restrict myself to a few.  This album demonstrates Kele Okereke’s lyric writing at its best, when he nailed the art of telling a story but keeping it vague enough to mean so much to so many different people – I’m not concerned with the problems of being forced to shave my legs as talked about in ‘Luno’, but the problems  of ‘being tired of your mum and you’re tired of your dad, got you jumping through hoops’ seems to me to be pretty universal.  Sure, there’s the occasional lyrical weak spot, such as ‘you’ve been trying to reach me, you bought me a book’ (This Modern Love) but such moments are part of the charm, a touch of human warmth under what can often be quite icy and forbidding guitar lines.  The fact is that I first discovered the album through friends when I was  15/16, and we all know how fun and carefree a time that was . For various reasons lyrics such as ‘it hurts all the time when you don’t return my calls and you haven’t got the time to remember how it was’ from ‘Like Eating Glass’ and ‘if you feel, a little left behind’ from ‘Banquet’ really hit home, and in many ways the reason I like this album so much is that it seems to me to be about growing up: the anger and frustration – ‘why do you have to get, so fucking useless’ (‘Positive Tension’ – an absolutely astonishing moment live); the sadness and melancholy ‘this modern love, breaks me’ (‘Modern Love’) and the endless ups and downs of a pretty normal childhood.  Trying to explain this feels pretty weird, as each song over the years has built up this huge backlog of invested emotions, and even now listening to the repeated refrain of ‘I figured it out’ of ‘So Here We Are’ brings back so much, all of it intangible and half remembered but important nonetheless.  ‘Plans’ might be the best of the whole bunch, so I’ll hope you’ll forgive me if I quote at length:

Wake up dreamer
It's happening without you
Cut your hair and shave your beard
You squandered your chances
I'll give you a thousand pounds
To show me how you do it
Stop being so laissez-faire
We're all scared of the future

Been training vipers to come for you
In your dreams to release you
Been training vipers to come for you
In your sleep
And the ravens are leaving the tower
And the ravens are leaving the tower
Make your peace

I've got a taste for blood
Leave the weak, leave the young
I've got a taste for blood
I'm walking out without you
You will kill or be killed
It's about progress
I've got a taste for blood

Wake up sleepyhead
It's happening without you
Such a nice guy
You tell me everything twice
Whipcrack speed jump
We will run backwards
Stop being so laissez-faire
We're all scared of the future

We make plans for big times
Get bogged down, distracted
We make plans for good times
All neon, all surface
So kiss me before it all gets complicated
I've got a taste for blood

This song sums up so much of what it’s like to grow up and feel like you’re missing out, switching from sadness to anger to confusion, mixing readily understandable images with slightly unsettling phrases...pff – I’m kinda running out of words, as I don’t really want to ruin it but getting too analytical. I guess I can never really communicate what these songs and lyrics mean to me, because I can barely explain it myself, but even if you don’t like Bloc Party I hope that this has reminded you of the songs that mean a lot to you, and the reason why music is so important – why good, meaningful music needs to be supported and spread to as many people as possible.  This was such a big album for me growing up that I don’t think it’s too far to say that I’d be a very different person if I hadn’t been shown it when I was, and without a doubt it’s one of the reasons I got into offbeat and am so keen to get people involved and talking about the music they love.  If I had to have a conclusion, I guess I’d say that I still love this album because I’m still growing up in a way, and the day I stop loving it might be that day I become an adult. And then God help us all.

Big love x

Alex

Favourite Album: The Hold Steady, Separation Sunday

HELLO! Welcome to Offbeat’s brand new blog. We’ve decided to kick off by running through each of the exec’s favourite album of all time, and as President I am FIRST UP how exciting. So here we go.

I’ve picked the Hold Steady’s Separation Sunday, their second album, released in 2005, for many reasons. First and most important is that whenever I’m asked, I say this album. And it’s the truth – I may have listened to other albums more, I may not have grown up with it, it’s perhaps not a ‘cool’ choice – but it IS my favourite, I can sit down at pretty much any time, in any mood, and Separation Sunday will match that mood, and the 40 or so minutes of it will go by in almost seconds.

I find it pretty much impossible to talk about music on any theoretical level, and sometimes I feel guilty talking about all these complicated, groundbreaking records as I can’t even read music, let alone understand it, except on an emotional basis. Which is good in a way, as almost all of the Hold Steady’s albums are based on filtering deep, interwoven and pop-culture filled narratives through old, almost recognisable guitar riffs, the music itself not particularly experimental, in fact purposely NOT so I think. But anyway – the album itself. THS have an underlying, rather ambiguous narrative through every single one of their songs, which on the first few listens seems to be just about being AMERICAN and LONELY and DRUNK and ON DRUGS and THROWING IN OCCASIONAL LITERARY REFERENCES. Which in itself is still rather amazing, and a lot of the time the lyrics work on a more anonymous level, a lot of the events and feelings Craig Finn sings about (aside from being American, I guess), well, I’VE felt them, and experienced them.

But then (well it took a while for me) it hits you, that certain characters keep coming up, and these characters seem to be going to the same places, and the countless biblical references all start to tie together and you realise that over their something-like sixty song career the Hold Steady have been telling a very individual story, sketching little pieces of lives then revisiting a certain event two, three or four albums later. And importantly, it’s a FANTASTIC story, about a good-girl-gone-bad called Hallelujah (or Holly as Finn eventually calls her), who gets caught up in “some complicated things”, falling in love with the drug dealer Charlemagne and then gang member Gideon, and Holly’s kinda the heroine and kinda Jesus and kinda Judas too. There’s so much going on, even just on this one album, which tracks her descent into addiction and basically being a MESSED-UP-GIRL and then the last song’s a resurrection scene (this band does maybe the best album closers of any artist EVER). But it’s nowhere near as simple as this and her ‘rebirth’ is pretty much a hollow gesture and no-one’s any happier than where they started but ANYWAY I could write for hours about the story but I won’t.

One of the things I like most about both the Hold Steady and about the story they tell is how there’s a focus, how (and I know it sounds silly) there’s a SCENE, a musical scene, a community of people and bands that all come together around certain art and how the music isn’t just something you hear in the background, but an active part of life, and it has specific connotations and MEANING and stuff, it’s something to be a part of, whether it’s the 90s hardcore scene that Finn places his characters or the ‘Unified Scene’ who obsess over the Hold Steady and follow them across the world, who’re probably bigger fans than I. But this is one of the things I love about Offbeat at Warwick, how it’s a group of people with similar personalities and taste who’re thrown together and then suddenly they’ve become your best friends and some of the best moments of your life have come with this disparate group of people, all because something so ambiguous a label as an “indie/alternative music society” has brought you together into an actual something. And this is what I hope will continue to happen while I’m President, that the little scene we’ve got going will continue to go and grow, and that new people will come in and find the most amazing, interesting people, and they’ll end up sitting on each other’s floors listening to old records and falling in love and it’s all because of MUSIC.

The Hold Steady - Multitude of Casualties 

Separation Sunday on Spotify