Biffy Clyro: ‘We need to sort out the inequalities’

Biffy Clyro might, like thousands of musicians, have found their best-laid plans for 2020 upended by the Covid pandemic, but bass player James Johnston sounds philosophical about the way things have panned out for two times Leeds Festival headliners.
Biffy ClyroBiffy Clyro
Biffy Clyro

“We’re doing okay, we’re soldiering on,” says the 40-year-old. “Like everybody else in the world, of course our plans all changed and were put into disarray, you’re trying to get over that, but at the same time there’s a much more serious problem out there in play. It’s been a confusing time, to say the least.”

Although confined to home in the past few months, the trio, known for hits such as Many of Horror, Mountains and Black Chandelier, have been “fairly productive”, he reports. Frontman Simon Neil has been playing virtual gigs while Johnston and his twin brother Ben have been doing Instagram chats. “We got involved in a couple of recording projects – we recorded our parts at home and put them together for a BBC Live Lounge,” he recalls. They also took part in one of Tim Burgess’s Twitter Listening Parties for their 2009 album Only Revolutions.

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Now comes the big push for their ninth studio album, A Celebration of Endings. Doing promotional interviews from his Ayrshire home has been enjoyable, Johnston says, “because I think it’s the contact we’ve all missed”.

The band arrived at this album after a busy 18 months in which they undertook an MTV Unplugged tour and composed a soundtrack for the film Balance, Not Symmetry. “They were two projects that never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined we’d do,” Johnston says. “We grew up watching MTV Unplugged and all those great performances in the 90s and to have a chance to do that and this film was quite an eye-opener. After doing that and sitting down we wanted to get back and have some chaos.

“With Balance... the shackles were completely off, we could do whatever we wanted, and it just reminded us that it’s meant to be fun. We all want to take it seriously but it doesn’t mean that you can’t take the opportunity to make each other laugh at some of the heady choices we trying and it just reminded us to take risks again in our music.”

A Celebration of Endings features several of Biffy Clyro’s most melodic choruses. Johnston, however, draws short of describing this record as their ‘pop’ album. “I probably wouldn’t rush to describe it as that,” he says. “I’m not afraid of people using the word ‘pop’, right from our very first album (Blackened Sky) a big element of the band’s music has been to have a chorus that you can sing along to and that have that really strong melody.

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“I think if anything we just feel that sometimes rock music gets stuck in a rut, you get stuck in your lane and you’re constantly looking to the past, to Led Zeppelin or Metallica or Nirvana, trying to recreate these amazing moments of time. Of course you just can’t do that. You’ve got to always look forward. If that means embracing different elements of the technology available to you in the studio or if that means trying different styles of music as is your wont I think that’s the only way to move forward as a band.”

Biffy ClyroBiffy Clyro
Biffy Clyro

The song Space has particular potential to be a massive hit. Johnston says they seek guidance from their label when it comes to choosing singles. “There are some songs that when you hear them you think, ‘I can hear that being a single’,” he says. “We tried to stay away from thinking that, particularly when we were writing the songs and recording them, you want to keep your mind free at that point. When it comes to singles we’ve always taken some input from the record company, that’s the point when we’re maybe able to stand back a little bit and follow their lead because it’s sometimes hard to tell what might work as a single but I think that one we’re fairly confident will be a hit single.”

Elsewhere the pretty strings on Opaque contrast sharply with the loud roar of electric guitars on Cop Syrup. Johnston says they like to keep listeners on their toes. “A hundred per cent, that’s what it’s all about,” he says. “It keeps us on our toes, it keeps us excited. We love that element of surprise, it’s always been something that’s really key to the sound of the band, to try and take you on journey.

“I think because we’re a three-piece we’re tight and we’re muscular like a band like Nirvana. We take influence from a band like Rush where we take you on a journey so that once you get to the end you forget where you started, that’s always something that’s really appealed to us.”

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The album’s title seems especially apt for current times. Johnston says it simply captures a mood that was in the air. “It was perceived and written and recorded a long time before this terrible virus came along, but it’s quite eye-opening to see the parallels you can draw between the themes of the lyrics and what we’re going through right now,” he says. “It felt to us like some of the influences on parts of society that we grew up with, like compassion and loyalty and generosity, some of these tenets of life for the last 30 years have been erased or taken away. Now you see the younger generation coming along almost wagging a finger, saying ‘wait a minute, this isn’t good enough, it’s time for a change and that should be celebrated, I don’t think we should be afraid of change.”

He agrees with the idea that we could be due a societal re-set as a result of the experiences of the last few months. “I really hope so,” he says. “Two months ago I was praying for things to return to normal and now I’m not really in that position. Now I think there has to be a ‘new normal’. It’s blindingly obvious that life was unfair for so many people and we need to sort out the inequalities that we have, not just in this country but really around the world. It’s a big task but it doesn’t mean that we just put it off for another day, I think we’ve got to start now and we’ve got to come together.

“It’s just what the album’s talking about, as a society we now need to find compassion and loyalty and generosity, and I think we need to be a little bit more accepting of views that are different to our own. That’s the key. As much as we try and educate each other and help each other, there’s always going to be elements of society that simply have different views and I think it’s important to learn a bit of tolerance, it’s the only way you can have a mixed society. We’ve got a beautiful tapestry of different experiences in this country and I think we’ve got to tap into that and celebrate it as opposed to something that we scold and try to get rid of.”

Social media, he concedes, can be “brutal” at times. “People are angry, people are stressed out, so I can understand when things flare up. I don’t really know how (we solve that), but we’ve got to pull together.”

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As a band Biffy Clyro have evolved considerably over the course of 25 years. Johnston says it’s something the band notice most when they’re compiling a set list. “Putting together a set list is always a challenge, it’s a really explicit look into the journey the band has taken,” he says. “Right back on the first album there are musical elements that make up the foundation of the band and I think those things are still in play. I think we’re a slightly awkward, left of centre rock band that if you look away for one second we’re going to take a complete left turn. I don’t think we’ve lost those elements. It’s like the idea of changing society because you want to get rid of everything. We don’t need to get rid of everything in society in order to make a change and it feels like musically when we want to move forward we don’t have to get rid of everything that we’ve learnt in the past, not all habits that the band have are bad, we can afford to take some of the things we’ve learnt and add new things and move forward. That’s quite a nice tie-in to how I feel society can deal with our problems.”

A Celebration of Endings is out now. Biffy Clyro are due to play at the O2 Academy Sheffield on April 15, 2021, with further dates to be announced. www.biffyclyro.com

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