Glasgow Power Trio Biffy Clyro Aim to Conquer the States

In an age where downloads and iPod compilations have placed the album under threat, Biffy Clyro might be some of its last great envoys. Certainly, with an unholy host of choirs, orchestras and fractured interludes all vying for airspace amongst a stack of bruising guitar anthems, current offering Puzzle shows a continuation of the Scottish veterans’ determination to play surrealists with rock’s rulebook. The difference this time is that the ambition has found an audience to match it. Puzzle debuted at number two in the UK charts in May, while the band was personally invited by the nation’s favorite sonic alchemists, Muse, to support them at their 80,000-capacity Wembley Stadium extravaganza one month later.

Aside from singer/guitarist Simon Neil’s assertion that Muse are “one of the greatest rock bands in the last 15 years,” there’s an ideological kinship between the two acts; Like Matt Bellamy’s trio, Biffy Clyro (completed by bassist James Johnston and twin brother Ben on drums) have warped musical boundaries to fit their own, grand designs, and like them, it’s taken people a while to come around to their way of thinking. Puzzle is Biffy’s fourth album, their first to go gold.

“It feels like we’ve always tried to be a bit awkward, and obviously that does kind of alienate people,” continues Neil down a phoneline from his home in Ayr, Scotland. “But it’s also made us a tight unit as a band in that we now operate entirely on what we judge as right and wrong in music. Our last two records [2004’s Infinity Land and 2003’s recorded-in-a-day The Vertigo of Bliss] were incredibly intense listening experiences that you had to hear maybe 10 times before you found anything you could latch onto.”

Though he’ll use the word “intense” five times in reference to his band during the interview, it’s a description that’s particularly fitting to Puzzle. While numbers like “Living Is a Problem Because Everything Dies” and “9/15s” show a shapeshifting musical imagination at the height of its powers (the Graeme Revell-conducted string sections and choral overtures on the former sounds like the Foo Fighters dropping acid at the opera, the latter the soundtrack to a hellish nightmare), the record carries an equally pervasive emotional punch. Written during a time when Neil was dealing with the loss of two immediate family members, the singer found that his previously cryptic lyrical stance had become seeped in personal issues, hence titles like “Living…” and songs like “Folding Stars” (a tribute to his mother, Eleanor, that they’ve played live just once).

“Everything on Puzzle, it’s all about losing someone you’ve loved,” explains Neil. “And the darkest moments from that time are on there, as well as some hopeful ones. The songs were certainly written in terms of moving forward, and remembering how I felt on some songs more as a warning, so I hope it’s not a depressing record.”

With a shared age of 27, Biffy Clyro has been a part of its members’ lives, reckons Neil, almost “longer than it hasn’t.” Their roots can be traced back over 11 years to a garage in the town of Kilmarnock, outside the city of Glasgow, where the childhood friends first started playing together. At a time when Britpop fever had seized the UK, the trio looked initially to Nirvana and Weezer for inspiration, before delving into the American underground scene. “Oasis wasn’t really my thing,” imparts the singer, who sports a tattoo of In Utero’s winged anatomy doll on his left shoulder. “So for us it was all about discovering bands we’d never heard off, like [Texan emo types] Mineral, and weird bands that only released one record that weren’t even on the musical map but inspired with their belief in what they were doing.” While debut Blackened Sky didn’t appear until 2002, Biffy Clyro had already amassed an extensive live portfolio that constituted “playing hundreds of gigs to no one, then playing hundreds of gigs to five people.” Though Neil now puts their far better attended live show count at 1,000+, he insists those early experiences gave the band an essential perspective. “We’ve done this for a long, long time, and we couldn’t have done it for this long if we didn’t think we were doing something worthwhile. And I think that’s why we’ve still got such a hunger for it.”

If the years of sweating it out have finally elevated Biffy Clyro from cult heroes to chart stars, the coming months will offer little chance for complacency or rest as the band gears up for their first set of stateside tours. By the time you read this, they will have already completed the Warped Tour (which, along with the presence of Gallows, Funeral for a Friend and the Automatic, appears to be undergoing something of a British invasion this year), while an Anglophile-friendly jaunt with Editors followed by dates with an American act—the details of which can’t yet be revealed—will extend their US stay well into October. Of course, Neil is more than aware that their square-peg rock sorcery is as likely to confound as much as it will convert audiences.

“We’re not expecting it to be easy,” he admits. “But it’ll be good to be in America and be a brand new band that no one knows anything about in any way. They’ll be judging us purely on Puzzle and there’s not a lot of bands that have that chance on their fourth record.” It’s a situation the frontman hopes will find them in their element, regardless.

“For years we played as the underdogs, and I think we quite like it,” he laughs. “You need that fire in your belly!”

This entry was posted by RNYK on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 10:36 am