Biffy Clyro
Blackened Sky

How would the Nirvana have sounded if Kurt Cobain had been a romantic and a dreamer? In 2001, Simon Neil and the Johnston twins from Ayrshire, Scotland, debuted with their first album. Some even say that Simon, the vocalist and guitarist, resembles in facial features the sad boy from Seattle, while the group knows how to play loud and distorted just as they should, just like what is actually their favorite band.

But if anyone thinks this might be another post-grunge/grunge-imitating band, well, with Biffy Clyro you'd certainly be not entirely wrong, but not completely right either. Inside there are arpeggiated verses, sometimes with no more than three touches of the string, falsettos, and occasionally even some teardrops, quite a few feelings that seemingly won't be reciprocated, nonetheless expectations (a bit late-adolescent?) seemingly set up to be disappointed. In short: there is emo. The kind from the wonderful Sunny Day Real Estate, however, and not from the current punk bands. Moreover, as Scotland is still an integral part of the United Kingdom, they harness the craft of producing an album that can give rise to great singles, something that over the years will penalize Biffy (as they are called), too powerful and intricate to really be indie, too melodic (saccharine?) to be the Scottish Nirvana, as well as too "4 minutes" to be alternative.

The initial "Joy.Discovery.Invention" is "In Circles" of the Sunny Day, transformed into a UK chart single. "27", their first big hit, has a grunge guitar and scream chorus. "Justboy" starts out acid like a post-punk track (Fugazi?), then stops... From there begins a lullaby, like those "Siamese" Billy Corgan would love. Beautiful the ending of singing, guitars, and counterpoint, for what had turned from a lullaby into a nursery rhyme.

Almost a minute of hardness, then quiet, which would have been better without singing (sometimes these falsettos seem too self-indulgent)... "Kill The Old, Torture Their Young" has really nice music, although it's rather "without prospects" for radio airplay. "The Go-Slow" is half a Placebo track, but you only need to hear the beginning to understand it. Then it becomes more Dave Grohl than Kurt Cobain. "Christopher's River" is decidedly pop, at least based on the fact that it's a (decent) slow song that never speeds up, at most "thickens" with guitars and especially with choruses. "Convex, Concave" has an intriguing musical start, a verse that more than Nirvana sounds like Bush, with Simon Neil having the same voice as Gavin Rossdale. In the chorus, a very pop choir amid big guitars for the first half, Nirvana more Nirvana than ever in the second half. A sleeping special, in whose finale the inevitable murder takes place with a "sorry but I really have to do it," amid tragic guitars. Naturally, a monstrous solo explodes. There are those who could, with the material of this track, pull out an entire album, and others even a double CD, and perhaps get reviewed by Mien_Mo_Man with five stars on DeBaser. Biffy Clyro instead creates a very original jumble.

The desire for a single returns in "57", among verses finally not lullaby-like, an encouraging crescendo, a void with babbling, an aom rock chorus. Perhaps the most convincing chart track by Biffy, just as the following "Hero Management" is the best of those Clyros who play music without thinking of the song, who make rock before they make songs. Standard grunge guitar parts and plots alternating with those postpunk, and a screamed-to-the-hilt finale. "Solution Devices" is grunge to the last note. "Stress On The Sky" starts almost Frusciante-like, but then the air becomes very heavy, with those big guitars and that drum all the time doing its own thing. When the quiet arrives, Kurt resurrects. The angry finale mixed with vocalizations from vocal cord extension exercises, whatever that means, is chilling. The concluding "scary Mary" is the most traditional musical specimen. Naturally, a ballad.

Biffy Clyro are good, more melancholy than angry, but many like it better that way. They know how to play louder than twenty Dohertys together. They are not mature, perhaps they are not even today six years and three albums later, but they are alive, they play a lot, they overdub zero. Okay, they are derivative, they might even be almost jazz rock and new wave in some future episodes, and it might be fun to play who knows more, who finds more influences, more bands, in the sound of this or that track of theirs. I, I repeat, mostly saw Nirvana and Sunny Day Real Estate, but I would be ready to put my little hand on the fire about the presence of Kyuss and Placebo, a taste for Corgan-like verses as well as for the accelerations of bands like Husker Du and Fugazi, bands that were among others also seminal for grunge, so... There's also those who hear Pixies, Pavement and even Rush in them...

A work so impersonal it became very personal. Paradoxically (but I know little about the very recent "Puzzle," which is spoken of well), in the following works, by gradually personalizing the style, they will write songs that I will find from album to album increasingly less appealing. But obviously better than those of the current armada of the British invasion.