Review Summary: Puzzle II: Depression Boogaloo
I don’t think it’s physically possible to engineer something like Ellipsis to happen on purpose.
Every now and then, something just breaks in an artist, but there are still records to be made because the contract says so. This leads to mesmerising train wrecks that suck you in with their subtle “am I doing this right?” dark edge. As you listen, you can hear the album questioning its own existence, and the awkward feeling has you coming back time and time again. The crown jewel of this sort of phenomenon would be Car Button Cloth by The Lemonheads, with a recent example being Heartbeats and Brainwaves by Electric Six. In both cases, the records were preludes to major changes in the bands’ lives – The Lemonheads broke up, while Electric Six parted ways with their guitarist/producer and never sounded the same again.
Ellipsis finds Biffy Clyro similarly broken, but trying to pick up the pieces and arrange their lives anew. Mind you, Biffy Clyro are no strangers to turmoil – the transitional state of their career was marked by the passing of the frontman’s mother, and the band nearly split prior to Opposites because the drummer lapsed into alcoholism. This time around, Simon Neil’s demons came crawling out of the woodwork again, and you can feel the time-stopping confusion oozing from the album’s nooks and crevices.
But wait, there’s more! You also get a producer shift! The discomfort just keeps piling on. It took Biffy Clyro a while to get a good thing going with Garth Richardson, and Puzzle is the perfect case study of an outsider coming into the picture and kicking in the teeth of the album the band had prepared. Some of it worked – “Living is a Problem Because Everything Dies” benefitted from the slick pre-chorus, but quality tracks like “Miracle of Survival” being aborted for last-minute filler (“Love Has a Diameter” et al.) didn’t do the record any favours. Now Garth is out of the picture, and Rich Costey enters stage left and finds Biffy Clyro at their most creatively vulnerable in years. The record doesn’t get its teeth kicked in, but you can distinctly hear the band and the producer feeling each other out.
Ellipsis is chock full of slick, toothless songs that feel like the producer was their initiator, but the air of depression makes them oddly appealing instead of lifeless and phoned in. “Friends and Enemies” is kitschy compression purgatory, but the band’s ill-measured amount of enthusiasm makes it surprisingly head-bobbing. “Re-Arrange” strays away from how Biffy Clyro does ballads, but the song is disturbingly earnest and coarse in a manner that doesn’t fit the music. The soft falsetto croon of "I've got a lot of rage and I'm struggling with ways to control it" over a shimmering chord shape that has nothing to do with rage is something that has to be heard to be believed. “Flammable” sticks out the most, possibly because an outside writer’s involvement (another thing that Biffy Clyro never stooped to before), but the band shrugs and goes along with it like a downer at a party, and the song becomes eerily beautiful when a minimalist, Smashing Pumpkins’esque guitar lead emerges out of nowhere midway through.
There’s still a bit of room for Biffy to do Biffy though, hinting at what the record may have been in its original incarnation. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. “Animal Style” wheels out its trite invitation to poor decision making, likely to result in tears in the back seat of your parents’ car, to make room for a short diminished interlude. Said interlude sticks out like a sore thumb and does the song no favours, akin to the breakdown in “Black Chandelier”. “Herex” feels like the band trying to be edgy with the short black metal’esque tremolo bursts whilst simultaneously keeping it safe throughout, subsequently going nowhere. “On a Bang” and “Howl” both hit the nail on the head and offer a good balance of functional hooks with subtle quirks to keep the listener on edge. “The Joke’s on Us” and “Sounds Like Balloons” got worthy heirs. However, things really come together in “Medicine”. It’s yet another G major ballad, spliced from the same template as “Machines” and “God & Satan”, but its delivery and lyrical content perfectly epitomise the awkward helplessness of the band at this point in time. The same downer who shrugs and delivers “Friends and Enemies” and “Flammable” gets to drop the façade and basks us in its full glory. And by god is it morbidly appealing.
In terms of actual production, the angle of attack is quite interesting. There’s a lot of compression bordering on distortion, electronic splashes, little instrumental fills. And, like a fresh coat of paint, it works quite nicely, adding another dimension to the tracks. The clipped drums give “Wolves of Winter” a solid thump of energy which is different than anything the band had before, but nevertheless provides a level of adrenalin absent from any of their prior major label releases. The shimmering double-tracked acoustic hovering somewhere over the effect-drenched electric lead is a nontrivial component as to why that particular melody in “Flammable” is so enjoyable. The blatantly distorted “WOO!” over the chugging interlude in “Herex” is the best part of the song. “Small Wishes” is a case unto itself, what with all the banging piano fills and wolf howling and whatnot.
“Small Wishes” is, in fact, what gives me hope for the future of this collaboration. You can hear the producer doing everything within his power to give a weird-ass song that should have been left off the album a coat of sheen in line with the band’s vision, showing the potential for the two entities to “click” far better than the band ever did with Garth. If this does happen, Biffy may well catch a second wind and emerge into the mainstream on their own terms, with sprawling song monsters merely given a haircut and a tuxedo instead of a full-on castration into an inoffensive shanty. That would likely involve songs such as the deluxe edition bonus tracks staying in the main disc over the weird, slick daytime radio material that only works now because the band is depressed. I’m quite optimistic though. Before that happens though, you’ll find me scouring through Ellipsis’s B-sides, trying to pick up any other cool bits that may have fallen out of Puzzle II.
