Editorials
q
The Best Of 2004 - Top 20 Albums
<Back< No.20 | 19-18 | 17-16 | 15-14 | 13-12 | 11-10 | 9-8 | 7-6 | 5-4 | 3-2 | 1 >Next>
 
No.3 Biffy Clyro - Infinity Land

 
Having waded through the swamps of grunge, the barren wastes of post-hardcore and the urban jungle of 21st Century American Rock, our three Glaswegian joy discovery inventors finally reach their destination: the unknown. Biffy’s new home is decked out with the familiar genre signifiers – fuzzing and shrieking guitar lines, mammoth drumming, oblique ‘from the heart’ lyrics – but it’s the complexity of the songwriting and the fastidious attention to detail that mark this out as unchartered territory. Finally reaching beyond their hardcore fanbase and into unit-shifting respectability, this is a watershed album and undoubtedly the best proper rock album of the year. TP

Looking back now in the cold light of February - six months older and wiser - it seems all too likely that the giddy review I wrote for this album last August was ridiculously overenthusiastic, that it was an error of judgement caused by hot weather, too much red wine and sleep deprivation from the engineering work on the Northern Line carried out between midnight and 6am, mere inches from my bed. It would seem likely – but it isn’t! I stand by every word! I’d do it all again in an instant, I tell you! Anyway, the Go! Team deserve their suitably lofty position here, and are my tip for massiveness in 2005. So they’ll almost certainly have been dumped by their label by the time you read this, then. MB