It’s the last weekend in June and Kilmarnock rock titans Biffy Clyro are spreading the love from Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, where they’re serving as the main warm-up for headliners The 1975. Looking out over a sea of swaying arms, frontman Simon Neil sweetly pines, “God only knows what I’d be without you,” both a bittersweet tribute to the recently passed Brian Wilson and an encapsulation of “the spirit” of the festival. “It was beautiful, it was righteous,” he tells NME a month later, as he and his bandmates join us in a quiet dining room at the London hotel the band are staying at. “Glastonbury wants to do things fairly with justice.”
- READ MORE: Biffy Clyro – ‘Futique’ review: back from the brink with a celebration of all things Biff
The unlikely Glasto regulars certainly tapped into the actual vibe of the weekend, opening their set with the mantra of ‘A Little Love’, the lead single of their 10th album ‘Futique’: “With a little love, we can conquer it all.” “So much of the media made [Glastonbury] sound like a left-wing riot, but every sentiment was said with love, positivity, and for want of a better world,” notes Neil, nodding to the headlines courted during and after that weekend by their former tour buddies Bob Vylan.
Love, an acceptance of one’s past and making the most of the present are what drive ‘Futique’. Those ideas came into focus after Biffy’s run of intimate Glasgow and London shows last year, where they celebrated their first three albums by playing them in full. “The gigs were incredible, and it made us a bit arrogant in a way,” admits Neil. “You’re learning these songs and having a conversation with yourself, sitting face-to-face with who you were 20 years ago and inhabiting that.”
Aside from the “biggest regret” of not dedicating the ‘Infinity Land’ gigs to the late NME scribe, “sweetheart” and true Biffy champion Dan Martin (“He helped make that album so special, so god rest his soul,” adds Simon), the shows helped to set the band at ease with their own history. Getting comfortable with the past is something their frontman has been doing on a personal level, too.
“Last year I went through family pictures for the first time since my mother passed away,” he tells NME. It’s his mum Eleanor and dad Gordon who are lovingly cheek-to-cheek on the cover of ‘Futique’. “I saw the joy in them and the life, the stories and the memories,” he said, revealing how it would colour his life and his writing. “That’s impacted how we view everything.”
It was the loss of Simon’s mother that inspired their 2007 breakthrough album ‘Puzzle’. That record saw them ascend from cult mathy weirdos to an arena-filling festival headlining concern off the back of Neil and his childhood pals’ newfound compulsion for their music to reach as many people as possible. Each record from then on had a guaranteed and growing audience, with the band’s idiosyncrasies becoming more familiar and something the trio would increasingly look to shun. Until now.
“This album is arms-wide-open, defenceless, for better or worse, here it is. That’s what I want given to me as well” – Simon Neil
There always seems to be a loss at the core of Biffy’s records – of a loved one, in the heart, in modern life, but this time the loss was nearly themselves. “This one is about coming to terms with the things that make life tough but finding something in that,” says Neil. “It’s about finding a reason.”
It took “a journey and a nightmare” to reach that place of comfort. They had to ask themselves if it was all really worth it and if their hearts were in it. “We took everything for granted,” admits bassist James Johnston, while his twin brother and drummer Ben adds: “There’s always a fear that this amazing thing could end.”
After the epic societal reckoning of quick succession sister albums ‘A Celebration Of Endings’ and ‘The Myth Of The Happily Ever After’ – both pre-empting lockdown but released during the pandemic – some heavy post-lockdown touring found the band burned out and in need of a break. “It just fucked with our heads, it fucked with our dynamic, it fucked with our purpose,” says Neil, who filled a couple of years with his brutal grindcore side-project Empire State Bastard. But what were the other two up to while their bandmate was away getting his metal on?
“Existential crisis!” replies James, to a shared burst of laughter. “We were scratching around trying to figure out who we were. I suppose everyone does that in periods of growing up, but being in a band, there’s no space to grow up because you’re too busy. ‘Who am I? I’m not 15 anymore.”
James has been bravely open about overcoming depression to find his way back to the band, all while the band were finding a way back to themselves. They talked about calling it a day and asked if they could just feel lucky to be big enough to tour the hits. “Or are we still an artistic concern?” asks Neil. They holed themselves away alone at a house in the Highlands in search of the answer to that question, working on Neil’s melody-drenched new songs. “Then he started playing the piano part from ‘Two People In Love’,” remembers James, “and Ben and I were like, ‘Yeah!’ It was a new sound. We could see a future there. Let’s go.”
Feeling “more vital than ever” and like the album was shaping up to feel like “the only album we’d ever made,” as James describes it, they headed to the legendary Hansa Studios. Soon, regulars at Kreuzberg market and with James coming “this close to cutting his hair like Blixa Bargeld”, the ghosts of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, The Birthday Party and Einstürzende Neubauten just “bled into the songs” via osmosis.
It gave ‘Futique’ a new wave shimmer and subtle Berlin energy, but beyond that, they lived by producer Jonathan Gilmore’s mantra of “let Biffy be Biffy” – allowing the indulgence of referencing themselves and peppering the record with Easter eggs to their past. “Sometimes whatever we do will sound like Biffy,” says Simon, “and we shouldn’t be afraid of that. That’s really liberating.”
“It’s always tough. You have to dig to find the gold” – James Johnston
At the heart and centre of ‘Futique’ is the lighters-up encore-starter ‘Goodbye’, the broken ballad cousin of ‘Many Of Horror’ and ‘Machines’ and what Simon calls “one of the best songs I’ve written”. “This was the level that the whole album needed to be at with that level of communication,” he continues. “This album is arms-wide-open, defenceless, for better or worse, here it is. That’s what I want given to me as well.”
It’s an emotional gut-punch. “Goodbye, forever,” mourns Simon, but who is he really bidding an eternal farewell to? “I’ve asked myself that question a few times,” replies the frontman. “I think of it as goodbye to a version of myself I’m trying to leave behind. That’s not how I want the song to be read, but that was my initial instinct: the ‘too much of never enough’ shit. It’s really hard for me to find the balance between going at 100mph and being completely static.”
He tells us that there is a devastating literal reading to that closing line, “Goodbye to everyone”. “I’ve never had the proper suicidal ideations where I’ve had it all planned out, but I think anyone who lives in this modern world of a certain age has thought about these things,” he says. “It’s the first time where I’ve thought, ‘Goodbye to everyone’. That last line in the song is the most upsetting one because I know that I meant that at the time. I’m trying to twist the song into a more heartfelt and romantic world, but it certainly started from that.”
“There’s always a fear that this amazing thing could end” – Ben Johnston
Now, to get on the road and sing that lyric back with a new meaning and renewed lust for life breeds empowerment. “This is the period where we grow our armour,” Neil says of the upcoming tour. An arena run before another inevitable festival season stint awaits. And fear not, superf-ans, those long-awaited side-project albums from “mong-ageddon drone project” Tippie Toes and the beloved 00’s synth-pop outlet Marmaduke Duke are still on the way. For now, though, Neil must focus on the ‘Biff. “This is my lifeblood, this is my oxygen,” he admits. “The rest of the other music wouldn’t make sense if I didn’t have this. It’s not said in defeat, it’s actually strength to say you need each other.”
After all they’ve been through, it still seems far from over for Biffy Clyro. But, given that they always seem to need to get to the brink to come back, is that not a worry? “It’s always tough,” says James. “You have to dig to find the gold”. But, as Neil puts it, “it took that journey and that nightmare to find out that little diamond is so fucking worth it”.
It’s part of what makes Biffy Biffy, as Neil says, to suffer “a struggle, a desperation and a need that in general makes art worth it” before the joy of a very loud and physical exorcism. “I don’t think our raison d’être is to make anything un-intense,” he admits. “That’s something I’ve come to terms with. I don’t think we can articulate ourselves in that way.”
Making easy and “flippant” music isn’t possible. Ben nods: “That’s our last album, when that happens.” Biffy Clyro need “the wrestle” just as much as they need each other. God only knows what they’d be without it.
Biffy Clyro’s ‘Futique’ is out now via Warner
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