I like to think of myself as a music fan who has a fairly diverse range of likes (and dislikes) but mainly enjoys songs/albums/artists for “the music” and not what they stand for (there’s the odd exception to that rule of course).

But sometimes, despite the diversity and such, I find myself completely baffled by comments from music fans.
Biffy Clyro are the inspiration for this particular musing.

I didn’t quite get the furore that surrounded them as an ‘alternative’ (ugh, I hate that category) band, until the release of Puzzle. The first single from that (and first track) Living is Problem Because Everything Dies made me sit up and pay attention in a big way.
The big orchestral pieces and the way the song just conveyed so much energy made me buy the album, and I wasn’t disappointed. Almost every track was good, some excellent, and I started to think that maybe I’d given them short shrift before.

Lyrically, they are fairly … different is the kindest way of putting it I think, but compared to a band like Mansun from the late ’90s (especially their album Six) it’s definitely a pedestrian level of different.

So yeah, anyway, Puzzle was good. They started getting radio play, got into the charts, and got noticed on a wider scale. Naturally, the hardcore of fans got upset, because obviously ‘alternative’ (there’s that word again) bands belong to the fans that ‘discovered them first’ and aren’t allowed to be successful and make plenty of money in the process. (Does that need pointing out that I’m being sarcastic? No? Good.)

I saw them at Leeds Festival last year (as a ‘fan’ that discovered them only after they started being played on mainstream radio, I was risking a lynching it is true, but thankfully I slipped by undetected) and they were great, exuding a massive, all-encompassing energy that just filled the tent, sucked everyone in and then spat them out exhausted and happy at the end (does that sound wrong?)

Recently, they released Mountains, their first new release since Puzzle (and a track that is destined not to go on any album, apparently they were so excited about the track they just wanted to release it).

Zane Lowe got so excited about it on Radio 1 that I felt a little dirty just listening to him. Good god that man can gush about a band. Supposedly it was the best thing they’d ever written, the best thing since sliced bread, a mammoth of a song.
I was left a little cold by the whole thing.

I’ve heard it since, and have definitely warmed up to it. It’s doing pretty well in the charts (certainly the iTunes charts anyway) and I checked out the reviews.

The main thought is that it’s an improvement on Puzzle with some going so far to say that Puzzle “wasn’t Biffy”.

Hmmm. Okay then. I just listened to Mountains (purchased legally thankyouverymuch). It’s a good song. But it is unmistakeably a continuation of the direction the band started to go with Puzzle and, to my mind, not nearly as complex (musically or lyrically) as songs from that album.

So … what? Puzzle wasn’t “Biffy enough”, yet Mountains is. Despite the latter being less complex in every way that supposedly makes Biffy Clyro who they are.

Is anybody else seeing the complete lack of logic involved here? Am I missing something fundamental, or is it just yet another case of the ‘alternative crowd’ simply hating “their” favourite bands going mainstream?

When I started on a design for this site, I tried to go for something mad and abstract. Think scratchy drawings, lots of line-art and distressed typeface.

It failed.

I realised why today, when thinking about why I liked Biffy Clyro’s latest album so much, but didn’t like the older ones much at all.
Then I got it.
Puzzle is quite a polished piece of work, certainly compared to the older albums. And I like it for that. I think an enjoyment of high production values applies to other favourite albums/songs, even though I never singled that out as one particular aspect until now. For example, BT’s Emotional Technology is widely recognised as a highly-honed and polished piece of work, and some people criticise it for that.

It makes perfect sense of course. I like shiny things. I’m big into technology. I always try and go for the things that have been worked on and polished to perfection … or as near as it can get. It’s why I find myself buying the next version of software and hardware even if the old one is doing just fine, and why in certain aspects of life I can be a bit of a perfectionist.

I said to Rob the other day how I wanted to change the blog again, but couldn’t even write my ‘About Me’ section, so how can I design something that reflects me when I can’t even figure out what to [i]write[/i] about me?
So I guess that’s answered then. Whatever it becomes, you can put a decent bet on that it’ll be shiny and polished

Not that it’ll change for a while I imagine, seeing as I have this week off before I start back at HP-CDS for another 6 months!