There’s really nothing to dislike about Biffy Clyro: Three Glaswegians taking a millennial emo sound and putting it in sonic packaging accessible with the generation that the likes of Evanescence and My Chemical Romance might be too….. let’s say ‘fruity’, for. It’s fun for a lot of purists to talk about Biffy Clyro being a rock band, and a lot of sceptics (myself included) to roll their eyes and say something to the effect of “A bunch of white boys doing grunge at festivals; How very original”. However, there’s more Gerard Way (MCR) about Simon Neil than there is Cobain, apart from the visuals, of course.
My first encounter with Biffy Clyro was not, surprisingly, ‘Many of Horror’. It was ‘Bubbles’ which soundtracked a particularly emotional love triangle situation in my late teens. I have a bubble being popped tattooed on my arm now, in homage to the emotional trek that that song took me through.
Imagine my anguish, then, as I watched this band devolve into sheer hubris-fuelled output in the five years that followed my discovery of them. I will resist the accusation of being one of those music fans who goes on about how ‘the old stuff was better’ because jesus-f*cking-christ, what in the world was their management thinking, letting them go into the hallowed halls (capitalist utopia) of the BBC Live Lounge and cover WAP???(Wet Ass P*ssy by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, in case you live under a rock). I love WAP, don’t get me wrong, I really love Megan Thee Stallion, but good god! There was a smidge of irony and tinges of Nirvana, especially in Neil’s vocals, but there is no humour in the world large enough to accommodate the hellscape of that cover. This was a couple years into my having lived and studied in Britain, so the fact that the BBC was the monolith of music broadcasting hadn’t escaped me. surely there was no way we could ‘Mon the Biff’ once again?
Well, they wrote the film OST ‘Balance, Not Symmetry’, and, even without the context of being the soundtrack to yet another piece of relentlessly cerebral cinema, this was a reach towards a sound that would have landed them somewhere between Muse and the Foo Fighters, if successful. It wasn’t successful, so it came off as Depeche Mode finding new ounds on their grandkids’ computers and taking their average discography bpm up by about 20.
The mess that was ‘A Celebration of Endings’, to me, felt like a lament to a washed-up trio of festival headliners, a panic attack that breathlessly oscillated between and old sound and a grasp for pseudo-modernity that really didn’t find either stool.
So, yes, I approached the companion album of ‘A Celebration of Endings’, ‘The Myth of Happily Ever After’ with some trepidation. I was cautiously optimistic as it opened with ‘DumDum’, which had energy, spirit and may have been everything Biffy Clyro have been looking for. The reverb and electronics combine with subtly surprising (still safe) choices in chord progressions and bring us Biffy Clyro at their best, a tapestry of intricate yet simple melodies with postmodernist lyricism that has some earnest too it. There’s space that cushions the sound and immerses you into a sense that you’re entering a Legend of Zelda-esque world, fantastic and shimmery.
You’re ripped out of that reverie with ‘A Hunger in your Heart’ that gives you the classic Biffy Clyro, talking to all the despondent souls, driven with electrifying (if maybe oversimplified) guitar riffs that build to a lovely middle eight, and an instrumental bridge that weaves its way with and around the rhythm section, rising to one final refrain, not unlike the bridge in ‘Bubbles’ 8 years ago. I can’t complain about a single part of this song.
The energy stays at a peak, with a little softness around the edges in the heart-breaking and tragic ‘Denier’, where Simon Neil’s aging vocal chords take you on a story pointing the finger of antipathy at a current or former lover, which is classic Biffy Clyro. He then begins a hoarse scream of ‘of course you didn’t know, of course you didn’t care’, which given the tenderness and vulnerability that characterised the previous 3 minutes a lovely bitter tinge, like a dark chocolate icing.
‘Separate Missions’ is a solid track 4, serving more of the above, with the addition of a synth riff this time, not unwelcome in the slightest. If this is what the last few years have been building to, maybe the mediocrity was worth seeing through.
It’s about at this point in a Biffy Clyro record that you start missing Simon Neil’s lullaby-worthy falsettos. ‘Witch’s Cup’ delivers this along with some lovely orchestral instruments on the periphery, horns adding oomph to the rhythms of the chorus, the occasional celeste or glockenspiel adding some twinkle to this angst-fuelled ballad.
It is here that we find Simon Neil’s promise as a post-biffy singer-songwriter, in the downtempo and poetic ‘Holy Water’. Within his metaphors, we find a troubled soul, done with the idiocy of having to be marketable to a crumbling world and culture. There is enlightenment in this one, and it begins to become a theme in the latter half of this album.
Existentialism is a not unfitting look on the Scots, calling us ‘just another species to explore’ in the theistic ‘Errors History of God’, that somehow mixes creationism and science, in this darkly reflective piece.
Musings on human endurance continue with, and I’m not joking, a tribute to a particularly resilient Japanese racing horse, ‘Haru Urara’. A losing and sickly horse, that somehow, kept picking itself up and being competitive. Given Brexit, the pandemic and the general air of failure in which this song echoes, whether it’s for themselves of the listener, this song is a rallying cry to pick ourselves up and keep running and not be turned into glue. I can get behind that.
‘Unknown Male 01’ suggests a certain disillusionment with the hubris which I referred to earlier. There’s self-awareness and well-heeled internal conflict about maybe having sold themselves out.
This heads so beautifully into a monologue in song, an ode to growth through the criticism of trying to evolve and not holding favour in ‘Existed’. It doesn’t lash out internally or externally. It reassures both listener and performer, ‘We can be and be better now’. We can, and so can they. If this is precursor to a rebirth, these two tracks show us why and how the band got there.
‘Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep’ is…..well, a manic-depressive episode that closes on the message of the two tracks that preceded it, imbuing in the message of trudging on the truth of catharsis and sheer grit, pleading with their own creativity and their fans to reflect on the mortality of human existence and spirit, ‘Give love to everyone’ and letting that ring out over the madly energetic refrain ‘Slurpy slurpy sleep sleep sleep’ in increasing disconnect with an synchronous meter and reality in general.
Whether this is Biffy Clyro’s big comeback or just a slight hiccup in a declining career, it is truthful, raw and everything we’ve been asking for since they hit the scene in 2013.
