biffy clyro

Is mankind hurtling to its ignominious end, like so many lemmings over a cliff? Simon Neil is sure he’s seen the telltale signs. And the gallows-humored Biffy Clyro anchor isn’t afraid of covering the extinction topic on his trio’s surprise, lockdown-sculpted new album, The Myth of the Happy Ever After. With no apology, it opens on the anti-Boris Johnson salvo “Dum Dum” (which lambastes the British prime minister for allegedly saying he’d rather have bodies piled up at his Downing Street door than impose another lockdown), then segues into a speed-bag-punchy “Witch’s Cup” (“I just hope when we go/That there’s something deeper”), the dissonant “Errors In the History of God” (“We’re trolls in this universe/happy just to torch shit”), and a funeral-parlor ethereal “Existed,” which finds the S...

Affable, good-natured to a fault, the usually upbeat Scotsman Simon Neil reluctantly admits to feeling a tad flustered lately. There’s not much that can bring down this fun-loving frontman for chart-topping rock trio Biffy Clyro, but our current coronavirus crisis and the attendant lockdown has come damned close. He turned 40 last year, having endured several personal upheavals, but he’d spent two studious years composing the group’s reflective new A Celebration of Endings set, their ninth, and six months perfecting it in the studio. “And then just as you’re about to reveal it to the world, the world makes other plans, saying No, you just can’t release this now,” Neil sighs over the phone while explaining the necessary postponement from spring. “And then not being able to bring it to life ...