Album Review: Biffy Clyro – Opposites (14th Floor; 2013)
BY BEN WHITTINGTON
Opposites is a surprise. It appears to be an album that has not been written with radio hits in mind by people with money signs for eyes. The music is refreshing, not because it is particularly brilliant, because it isn’t, but because it is unrestrained and unafraid.
Like a runaway steam train careering along rusted tracks, Biffy Clyro’s 6th studio album bends, swerves and explodes with a furious intensity that is totally invigorating.
For this, the production and recording team deserve some of the credit. They have achieved something quite extraordinary. They’ve successfully captured the chaotic magic of real people, playing real instruments, yet also managed to maintain a mainstream accessibility that will no doubt make this album a huge and enduring hit.
However, there is one element of the album that drags it back from the extraordinary to the ordinary. The song writing occasionally falls back on worn out clichés that jolt the listener into realising that this album was written with a mass audience in mind. Mantras like; ‘We are alive tonight, We are alive tonight’ found on the opening track, are better suited to the dance floors of the drunk and the deaf, not the work of serious artists.
Opposites is a very good album, but it could have been great. Biffy Clyro seem to have forgotten that sincerity and vitality comes from saying what needs to be said, rather than what you think people want to hear.
