To celebrate the release of second single Hunting Season from forthcoming 10th album Futique, we catch up with Simon Neil about the motivations behind new music, the “unbreakable connection” with his bandmates, and why you should always “hug your loved ones and listen to Biffy f*cking Clyro…”
“We’re a band inspired by Fugazi, Far and Shudder To Think,” grins Simon Neil, “and we’re playing before the fucking headliners at Glastonbury!”
Sat in the corner of a conference room of a Regent’s Street hotel, his back to a muted television with rolling news silently screaming about today’s latest horror, the frontman is reflecting on Biffy Clyro’s latest milestone marker, pondering K!’s assertion that he’s somehow found himself in one of the biggest bands the UK has ever produced.
“The tough thing for me is that the bands who I admire aren’t necessarily successful. It’s like, ‘If we’re a popular band, does that mean we’re shit?’” Simon laughs. “That’s been my fear – that only bands in the middle ground tend to become popular. But at Glastonbury we put our God Only Knows cover in the middle of Living Is A Problem and that’s when I knew we got here because of who we are, not in spite of who we are.
“I’m really proud of how far we’ve come but I don’t dwell on it. It’s not cool to say you love being a big band, but I do love playing big shows, and I think the songs I’ve been writing over the past five or 10 years have that up and outward melodies to them. I just can’t help writing these big fucking choruses!”
Indeed, the previous two Biffy records – A Celebration Of Endings and The Myth Of The Happily Ever After – are some of the most, dare we say, accessible records the Scottish trio (completed by brothers James and Ben Johnston) have ever produced, packing those gargantuan choruses Simon is so eagerly drawn to without compromising an inch of artistic integrity or invention. Released 14 months apart during the pandemic, they are two sides of the same coin, existing as a microcosm of where the band were at in those few confusing years.
Now four years removed, Biffy are back with new album Futique – a record that stands firmly apart from the red and blue world they created. Stating that, “I had to break out,” Simon explains how he coped with lockdown by constantly making music, including Empire State Bastard’s debut record Rivers Of Heresy.
“I just spent so long being Simon From Biffy that I needed to pull away, which is why I went and did ESB, to be a member of a band that were just making music that we knew most people would fucking hate – and that liberation was great,” he says with a smile.
“I needed to find a reason to make another Biffy record. Most of my favourite bands made two or three records then fucked off, and I’m very aware that we’re on our 10th album now, and I just didn’t want to make an album to make another album. I needed to reconnect.”
Admitting that he was “scared of melody” for a couple of years, whenever Simon was afforded time away from touring with Empire State Bastard, he’d start writing “beautiful little tunes” in a subconsciously defiant response to screaming his head off every night.
“I was really surprised that was my reaction,” he says. “Everyone asks me if ESB was going to feed into Biffy, and it did, but in the exact opposite way. It was like I ate pancakes for two years then I just wanted to eat fucking chips!
“It was a restart as a man in his 40s wanting to reconnect with why we did it. And that’s the sentiment of the album, with Futique – future antiques – it’s the way my relationship’s changed with my music over the years, me and the boys’ relationship, my relationships to my memories of my mum. And just parts of your life. Things change and you readjust your priorities, and it doesn’t mean you lose love for stuff, you have to make room for other parts of your life, and I guess we needed to make room to help to feed the music.”
As Biffy unveil the second offering from Futique in the form of Hunting Season, Simon guides us through the new track, the strength of human connections, and the impact he hopes the album will have.
What’s the meaning behind Hunting Season?
“Sometimes I go on mad internet sweeps and I’m
always surprised by how confident everyone is in their opinion. The song is
about: if you put your head above the parapet someone’s going to fucking shoot
you down. It’s the invisible judges of your life and what you do. Everyone’s
got an opinion, even your friends and family will say the wildest shit to you.
People can really make you unsure of who you are with just one passing comment.
So with me trying to find my fortitude again, and find the excitement of it, I
needed to talk about that aspect. And I’m guilty of it too, I judge people,
sometimes I’ll read a headline and tell someone, but I didn’t read the article
and I’ve passed a supreme judgement without knowing any of the details. It’s
about trying to not be that person, but of course we all fucking are (laughs).”
It includes the quite pointed lyric, ‘People that you barely know, find you so insufferable.’ Is that aimed at anyone in particular?
“A bit of it’s aimed at myself. Being in a band’s like being married for 20-odd years and we’re all guilty of judging each other for the smallest things, and I guess for the first time ever, making this record, I maybe had to plead my case about why we should be making more music. And for me, being in a band is all about making music. I’m still of the mindset that the reason we’re still going is that we have more to say. I think there’s a little bit of that and trying to shake us as a band by the neck like, ‘C’mon, let’s fucking do it!’
“It’s easy to pass opinion but it’s hard to do shit. Getting your head down and getting on with something is a brave thing to do. There are always people in your life that make you look at yourself in the not most positive light, and as I’m getting older I’m trying to relinquish my worry about it. Also there are people in your life where you’re not in the same headspace and that’s okay, you don’t always have to see eye-to-eye.”
Sometimes it’s in our nature to people-please and keep others happy.
“And sometimes you sacrifice your own stuff. This album is brutally honest at points. I read some lyrics and think, ‘Ohhh, I’ve been tough on myself or the boys or the music,’ but it’s all reflective and the reason it works for me is that it’s all ended with us completely together and standing together. Biffy Clyro is why I get up in the morning and do what I do. It’s why I take criticism seriously. I’m very sensitive, which is why I’m not on socials because it only takes a handful of people to call you a prick [to make me think that I am]. I think anyone that creates is sensitive to those kind of things and it can really affect you.”
The song also speaks about ‘auditioning for someone’s show’. Is that you, or a character?
“I’ve got two different sides to my personality. I do have the one that’s creative and I get really anxious when I’m talking to people. Even now when I go onstage, since the pandemic, I get these weird panic attacks, and there were a few times where I thought I was going to have a heart attack. And I’m almost talking to myself, like, I know I’m sensitive but I’m still putting myself out there as a bold, confident person. I am auditioning for this show, I am putting myself out there to be seen, but whenever I tell people I’m not the most confident, they’re like, ‘You get up there with your shirt off and sing.’ But to me that’s a different part to who I am, that’s not what informs the music – that’s what informs the performance. When you’re your own biggest critic, it can be tough.
“Glastonbury was the first gig where I didn’t have a heart palpitation onstage and I was so fucking pleased. You think you’d get better at it and I can’t believe I’m still as nervous as I used to be, if not slightly more so. And there are so many young bands coming through that I think are awesome as well – I want to be as good as Turnstile, Witch Fever, I fucking love High Vis – things like that get you anxious. And I take my responsibility very seriously, I want to still matter and connect with people, even if it’s their 60th time seeing Biffy. And I guess that takes its toll. I think completing this album is what I needed to do, I needed to get it finished. It’s been my process. And it sounds like therapy-speak, which I know is such a cliché, but it really helped me.”
Futique will be your 10th record. How to reckon with that?
“It was on our seventh record when I realised, I don’t think I’ve bought any band’s seventh album (laughs). I started investigating who’d made good seventh records – U2 did Achtung Baby, Green Day did American Idiot. That gave me permission, and from every album on it’s been like, ‘What is our reason for making another album?’ It isn’t enough to just make more music, there’s plenty of music in the world. It was finding that reason. I want the music to justify why we’re still playing shows, I don’t want to plateau, and with some of the lyrics in these songs it’s kind of addressing that crisis of confidence. Do myself, Ben and James still have that same connection we did at 18? Fortunately when we do things together it does reunite us.
“The beautiful thing with me and the boys’ relationship, having known each other since we were seven years old, we’ve got this unbreakable connection. Even if there’s stuff in our real lives, we find a way outside that to connect again. The same with the band, it’s just about stripping it all back and trying to remember that we’ve been buddies for 30 years, we’re not trying to do it for the pressure or the anxiety, we’re doing it because it makes us feel good.”
Do you worry about the passing of time?
“It does worry me. In my mind I’m still 25 years
old, but I feel like my engagement with the world is different to how it was
when I was younger. Our brains have changed, the way we engage, our
consciousness, my attention span… I used to love reading and now I can barely
read a chapter of a book before I’m looking at something else. I’m aware I’m
getting older but I’m also excited. There was a fear, but what I found in this
reconnection is that it’s a strength, it’s a power having all this experience
and everything we’ve seen together, the relationship I have with my wife who
I’ve known since I was 16. That’s what I want to celebrate.
“I can be fucking proud of everything we’ve done.
I love everything we’ve done. Every single moment we’ve made music is the best
fucking thing we could make at that moment. And I feel exactly the same about
this. We could tick along being a band for the next 20 years without making
much effort, but that’s the fear I have. There are bands out there that I’m not
going to name where it’s like, just fucking give up. You’re doing the same
thing over and over, so what’s the fucking point? As I get older it’s tougher,
but when I make a record I want it to feel like it was when I was 18. That’s my
job and I feel like I’ve finally got there on this album.”
What do you want people to take away from the
record?
“That in this tough fucking time, there’s so
much shit in the world that sometimes you just need to hug everyone near you
closer. We need to give people around us more benefit of the doubt, that’s when
I think we can be less judge-y of people. All we can rely on is our own
personal relationships. There’s so much shit outside of our control we wish we
could shake and change, but everything starts with your home and how you feel
amongst your people.
“This album is about me and the boys remembering
what we mean to each other, and what we would miss if this band ended is each
other. It’s not the glamorous side of it or the money, it’s the experience we
have together. If a couple of songs on this album make people turn to their
buddies or their loved ones and give them a cuddle, that’s what I want. It’s
not a naive optimistic thing, I’m being honest about relationships on this
album, but that’s all we have. We’ve got human connection and that’s what we
need now more than ever. So hug your fucking loved ones and listen to Biffy
fucking Clyro.”
Futique is due out on September 26. Get your tickets for The Futique Tour now.
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