In 2015, Scottish heavyweights Biffy Clyro took a year out from touring after nearly eighteen months solid on the road. This year, the Kilmarnock stadium-fillers announced two of the biggest landmarks in their career: a seventh album, and a return to headlining Reading & Leeds festivals.
Even so, the Biffy boys are in town tonight to perform an acoustic show in Leeds’ particularly intimate Headrow House, to a crowd of no more than 100 – a tiny iota of their usual stadiums. We catch up with drummer, Ben Johnston, on the venue’s rooftop beer garden. As he embraces the uniqueness of the show, he confirms how much they enjoy doing this type of gig: “It gets us to show the songs in their skeletal form. It’s a really different vibe to the big live rock shows.”
The atmosphere isn’t the only difference. “It’s fucking nerve racking. It’s a lot scarier when you can see everyone’s eyes. We don’t really get a chance to rehearse for all of these, so you get to see us at our most vulnerable.”
The show is in partnership with Festival Republic and Reading & Leeds Festivals – everyone in this tiny room has won a competition to be there.We ask about headlining the legendary rock festival over August bank holiday weekend. “Anyone who says they don’t like playing in front of loads of people is a liar. The rush you get when you hear a massive crowd cheering is second to none,” says Johnston, moving out of the Northern drizzle and into a shed for shelter.
Biffy Clyro have played Reading & Leeds eight times, moving from smaller stages to headliners in 2013. This summer’s co-headline slot with Fall Out Boy will be their ninth appearance. “We can’t believe we’ve been asked back to headline so quickly after our last slot without anyone hearing any new music,” Johnston admits. “We’re super happy and hopefully it doesn’t rain this time either.”
“We’ve got a new stage set up and more fireworks so we’re going to change it from a production side and we’re going to keep it spicy,” he playfully winks.
Between now and then,the band are set to release their seventh album, ‘Ellipsis’, on 8th July, via 14th Floor Records. With the released tracks, ‘Wolves Of Winter’ and ‘Animal Style’, it is clear that Biffy are moving into new places. Bigger sounds woven together by new recording styles, and throwbacks to the band’s earlier aggressive days. “We wanted to make a ‘slap you round the face’ sound, and it felt like our first record,” says Johnston.
“Our new record is a bit of change in direction. We wanted a reaction to the last three albums. They were big range albums with lot of scope and were cinematic and epic. We felt like we reached the zenith of that on ‘Opposites’, and we don’t think we can do that style of music any better, so we needed a change.”
He talks about their desire to find their naive teenage selves once more, recapturing that feeling of a band who are “coming out of the gates with their first record.”
During the show, the threesome play new acoustic heartbreaker tracks, ‘Medicine’ and ‘Rearrange’, which they have also performed in session with Radio 1. Two tracks that still show that Simon Neil has some exquisite song-writing ability at both extremes.
Complete with the two other tracks we have heard, ‘Ellipsis’ is teasing itself as Biffy’s most diverse album yet. Although the main framework of their songwriting hasn’t changed, the group had to embrace modern techniques to achieve their vision:
“Simon still writes the songs and then we come together. We had 4 or 5 songs where we didn’t really know how to put them together,” says Johnston candidly. “Simon had written them on acoustic guitar and we had some piano demos but beyond that we didn’t know what we were going to do.”
Their most recent album, ‘Opposites’, earned the band a UK number one and droves of extremely positive reviews. With a runtime of over seventy-five minutes, the double album was one of kind; few bands can execute a twenty track album with such ease and quality. With the addition of the b-side collection, ‘Similarities’, some even called for a triple album.
“We were very grateful at the fans for getting ‘Opposites’ to number one and having the patience to listen to such a long album. We were tempted to do a double again but we didn’t. This album took just as long to make. We thought we would let the fans off, so this is actually our shortest album!”
Now thirty-six years old, Ben Johnston stands very dapper with a near permanent grin emblazoned through his ginger beard. A proud father and Scotsman through and through, he spent his time off “with family and doing what normal people do.”
Nevertheless, they didn’t escape music entirely. “We still went into the room and practiced a lot. However we missed the rush of playing, it really informs who we are when we do live shows. We ended up being a bit broken after a while of not playing gigs.”
Biffy Clyro have been a band for an illustrious twenty-one years; from humble beginnings in Kilmarnock youth centres to their earth shattering headline slot at T In The Park 2014, and over 1.2 million UK record sales along the way.
We ask what golden rules he would give to his schoolboy self, and the drummer still remains modest and grounded. “I wouldn’t want to put anything in place that would change things or fast track anything,” he responds. “I feel the struggle that our band has had has made us who we are today and it has informed the music we write. Just don’t take things too seriously and enjoy yourself.”
Before rushing off back into the trendy bar, Johnston summarises ‘Ellipsis’ in three simple words: “Naïve, melodic and aggressive.” Frankly that’s all Biffy Clyro fans desire.
Read our review of the evening here.
Biffy Clyro will be co-headlining Reading and Leeds Festival in August.