When I was 16, I loved this band. Or, rather, I loved their more accessible tracks and found their spikier stuff a little jarring. I got The Vertigo of Bliss, on the strength of "Questions and Answers" and always enjoyed their willingness to go a little further outside the lines than a lot of other pop-rock bands. For a time, Blackened Sky was my favourite of their albums, thanks in no small part to boasting "Justboy", "27", "57", and "Joy.Discovery.Invention."
I started to find myself drifting off them around the release of Infinity Land and, with the exception "My Recovery Injection" (and its great video) nothing they put out really grabbed me for years. At least, not in the same way "Eradicate the Doubt" and such tracks did before.
Yesterday while browsing some albums, I noticed Puzzle was part of a cheap deal. As I was picking up some other stuff anyway, I thought "why not?" I'd heard nothing but good things about it when it was released and there were one or two other singles on it I then remembered enjoying, too.
It's fair to say that Puzzle is the Biffy Clyro album I wanted when I was 16. Whatever never quite clicked with me about them finally fell into place and I found myself not skipping tracks of theirs for the first time. Part of this is almost certainly down to the maturation of my taste, but the evolution of their songwriting shouldn't be understated. They've managed to keep everything that first drew me in (solid structure, rich guitars, and massive vocal hooks) while mashing their, for want of a better word, "quirkier" instincts into something more agreeable.
"Saturday Superhouse", "Folding Stars", "Semi-Mental 4/15ths", and "The Conversation Is..." all attest this. What do you think of them? Should I now check out Only Revolutions and Infinity Land? Are they still as good live now as they were back in '04/'05?
I started to find myself drifting off them around the release of Infinity Land and, with the exception "My Recovery Injection" (and its great video) nothing they put out really grabbed me for years. At least, not in the same way "Eradicate the Doubt" and such tracks did before.
Yesterday while browsing some albums, I noticed Puzzle was part of a cheap deal. As I was picking up some other stuff anyway, I thought "why not?" I'd heard nothing but good things about it when it was released and there were one or two other singles on it I then remembered enjoying, too.
It's fair to say that Puzzle is the Biffy Clyro album I wanted when I was 16. Whatever never quite clicked with me about them finally fell into place and I found myself not skipping tracks of theirs for the first time. Part of this is almost certainly down to the maturation of my taste, but the evolution of their songwriting shouldn't be understated. They've managed to keep everything that first drew me in (solid structure, rich guitars, and massive vocal hooks) while mashing their, for want of a better word, "quirkier" instincts into something more agreeable.
"Saturday Superhouse", "Folding Stars", "Semi-Mental 4/15ths", and "The Conversation Is..." all attest this. What do you think of them? Should I now check out Only Revolutions and Infinity Land? Are they still as good live now as they were back in '04/'05?
