Album review: Biffy Clyro – Futique

In the 30 years they’ve been operating as a band, we’ve had all kinds of albums from Biffy Clyro – from ruminations on grief, to thematic trilogies, to sister records. What we haven’t had, however, is an opus that examines what it means to be a member of Biffy Clyro. Or, more accurately, to ponder what it might be like if the band was to call it a day.

Given how excellent Futique is, that makes the notion of a Biffy-less world an even more terrible thing to contemplate. But if a period of painful soul-searching is what it took to get a record that sounds so remarkably alive, then that suffering wasn’t for nothing.

By now, we’ve all read Simon Neil’s description of Futique as “an exploration of ideas, objects or relationships that exist across time. We are never aware when we do anything for the last time and there’s a beauty and sadness within that.” This notion very nearly applied to Biffy, as they explained to K! recently, so it’s impossible to listen to this 10th album without applying that context to many of its 11 songs.

For the uninitiated, the three members of Biffy had the longest break of their career after the release of 2021’s The Myth Of The Happily Ever After. Simon responded to his need to “pull away” from his day job and an encroaching fear of melody by writing, recording and touring with his other band, the caustically heavy Empire State Bastard. Having scratched that markedly different creative itch, he returned ready to recommence and in fighting form.

Simon’s bandmates, however – brothers James and Ben Johnston – were somewhere else entirely. James, in particular, struggled with the reflection this period afforded him, which, compounded by a period of depression that left the bassist bedbound, almost spelt the end for Biffy.

James described this period as “growing pains” after emerging from the haze of the “perpetual adolescence” that is being in a band. There is certainly an energy of liberation about Futique, as if it’s breaking free from the pack that is Biffy’s work to date. Opener A Little Love coasts on spritely keys that recall new wave legends Talking Heads, while It’s Chemical!’s latter half is laced with the kind of melody we haven’t heard from these lads before.

The same thing happens on Dearest Amygdala, a track you feel you have the measure of until a rug pull somewhere around the three-minute mark heralds a tumble of hooks regimented by a bombastic, Brian May-esque guitar pulse. Meanwhile, in its closing seconds, the band’s humour shines through as they hastily add in a second pronouncement of the word ‘Amygdala’ to avoid any contentiousness among the neuroscientists out there.

It’s the more serious elements that people will be listening to intently, though. Aside from possessing a title that would be laughable if used by anyone but Biffy Clyro, the mournful but hopeful Woe Is Me, Wow Is You finds Simon defiant about the prospect of him and his buddies continuing with the enterprise they’ve been in since they were 15 (‘This is too special’). What’s more, Simon reiterates Biffy’s ethos, as much to reassure the band themselves as their listeners (‘We believe in a concept / We define the impossible / We undertook the research / We watched it play out / This ship is built to last’).

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While that might make things seem rather cut and dried, elsewhere on Futique you can see the workings that helped the trio come to that realisation. On the marvellous Friendshipping, while pondering the transient nature of some of our relationships, Simon mysteriously says he’s ‘Not ready to decide’. Elsewhere, Goodbye seems to be the frontman contemplating life if they’d taken the fork in the road marked ‘break-up’. ‘I’m out of reach / You’re out of bed’ seemingly referring to James’ challenges. Despite these heavy sentiments, the musical heaviness is kept in check this time around, especially anything approaching Empire State Bastard’s molten moments, which might be a disappointment to some.

Futique is an album to cherish, not just because we get to keep Britain’s biggest and most exciting rock band and witness the continuation of a success story that’ll never stop being surprising, but because it’s a bold, fresh effort full of tunes that are simultaneously immediate and deep. And if Biffy Clyro are still making music that’s this good 10 albums in, there’s no reason they can’t keep going ’mon and on forever.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Muse, Jimmy Eat World, Feeder