The first time I saw Biffy Clyro, opening Reading's second stage in 2001, I never pegged them as headliners 12 years down the line. After another live experience in 2003 seeing them support Limp Bizkit, and not really rating debut record Blackened Sky, I didn't return to the band again for some time.
And it was a cover version that got me back on the bus.
In 2006, Kerrang! Magazine included the High Voltage! A Brief History of Rock CD as a freebie. Although long out of my regular K! buying days, I remain a sucker for a free CD, especially one that offered much promise, current rock and metal bands covering the tracks that influenced them. Some of them are the most unadventurous covers you have ever heard. Fightstar's attempt at The Deftones' My Own Summer a particularly limp example. But come track 5, I took a step back and realised what I'd missed by ignoring Biffy in the previous three years. They they were absolutely slaying Weezer's Buddy Holly. In The Smiths special last week I said that I believe a cover should Capture the spirit of the original, in the style of the band making the cover, and I'm including this today to show that being achieved pretty much perfectly.
The cover showed me that Biffy had honed their own sound. Looking back now the progression over the second and third albums was out of this world. Infinity Land in particular is an album that delights in showcasing contradiction in music, at once pop and prog, heavy and heartfelt, beauty and beast. This cover retains those contradictions. What we hear is Weezer's heart, Biffy's soul.
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