Biffy Clyro Talk Ellipsis, Change and Love for Kanye

Before I leave Simon Neil to enjoy a well deserved day off at home in Ayr, I jokingly mention that he might need a visa the next time he plays in Ireland.
“We’d better stay in the fucking EU!” he scoffs. “We Scottish folk didn’t end up remaining in the fucking United Kingdom to then leave the EU. Let’s fucking not start on those pricks who wanna fucking leave. That’d be awful...” Timing, dear reader is everything. Twelve hours later, and I’d have been landed with a very grumpy frontman indeed, saying ‘fucking’ every third word – instead, he’s in fine humour. And while Brexit might be an unwelcome headache, at least it fits into the narrative: Biffy Clyro are a band experiencing something of a new beginning of their own.
“The last three records, we were trying to make really big, organic, beautiful albums that sounded like they could have been made anytime in the last 40 years,” Simon explains. “But with this one, we wanted to move things into a new area, which meant trying to feel as though we’d never made a record before. The last thing we wanted was to stand in a room and play songs live, so we recorded everything in some odd or different way. It really took us out of our comfort zone, to the point where it genuinely felt as though we’d never been in a studio before. That’s what made it feel like a rebirth.”
The result is Ellipsis, the seventh LP from the Scottish trio and the long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s gargantuan double-album Opposites. And while the new collection might be a triumphant opening for Biffy Clyro Mk. III – everyone, the band included, agrees that 2007’s Puzzles was the start of the Mk. II era – it started out in circumstances looking significantly less positive.
“It was a strange time for me, because I’d never struggled to feel inspired or write songs,” Simon reflects. “I think Opposites took it out of me. As the only songwriter in the band, having written 45 songs for that record, I think it dried the well more than I’d anticipated it would. I had trouble falling in love with anything I was writing, or I had grand ambitions: ‘Oh, we’re a big band now, I need to write like this’. It wasn’t satisfying, because that’s not me; I’d never written songs that way in my life.
“So it took a few months to shake that off,” he continues. “I needed to feel like I was a teenager again, and to lose some of the pressure I’d put on myself. I had to take myself out of the context of... Oh God, I’m going to sound like such an arsehole here, like I’m breaking into third person! But I needed to lose the mindset of Biffy, and just set about writing. Once I did that, things started to take shape.”
Was that process integral to the finished product? “It was. I can see the songs that I wrote in perhaps my least positive state of mind. And I can also see the lyrics that were written after I had my confidence back – saying that, anyone sticking their nose in could leave us the fuck alone!”
Indeed, album opener ‘Wolves of Winter’ is as clear a mission statement as you’ll ever find; a rough and tough warning that intruders on Biffy’s territory will be picked limb from limb. From there, along with the Johnston brothers James (bass) and Ben (drums), Simon runs the gauntlet from the pounding rock of ‘Animal Style’ to the delicate acoustic number ‘Medicine’; ‘Small Wishes’ is a jangling of which compatriots Belle and Sebastian would be proud; ‘Howl’ could conceivably sit within the Dave Grohl Book Of Song.
“For the first time,” he says, “we’d decided we wouldn’t worry about styles or genres as far as what made the album was concerned, and just pick our favourites. On previous albums, I think we’ve been a wee bit worried about reminding everyone we’re a rock band. Now, though, people know that, so we can explore different things without being concerned we’re giving off the wrong impression. That’s the liberty of getting to album No. 7 too, I guess.”
It was also a direct reaction to album No. 6 – the opposite of Opposites, if you will.
“We wanted it to be 10 or 11 songs, and no longer. We felt we had to restrict ourselves this time. And because it was short, we had to be slaves to the songs, and make sure every moment was completely vital; there were no moments where we could wander, or take our foot of the gas. It’s important to force yourself to do something different, because I think that’s where the magic happens. If you’re worried what you’re doing could potentially be awful – as was the case here – it normally means you’re doing something alright!”
That pang of fear was compounded by a definitive sense of adventure in studio.
“We didn’t want anything to sound too slick or clean,” Simon says. “Almost every sound on the album is distorted in some way; putting drums through guitar amps, or guitars through tons of pedals and synthesisers. There was no worry about doing things technically correct, which we definitely had in the past. We wanted to make everything...” He pauses, to find the right word: “Wonky. Even the pretty moments, we were trying to fuck up.”
The inspiration behind that quest might seem unusual – though since Simon has previously opined that rock music has stopped evolving.
“We were listening to a lot of A$AP Rocky,” he reveals. “For my sins, I’m a big Kanye West fan too – there’s obviously millions of others who do too, but my friends give me so much shit about it. In the last few years, the albums and sounds that have excited me have been mostly hip-hop. Beyonce’s Lemonade is as edgy as any rock album in years. Yeezus is one of the most important albums of the decade, in how it’s changed mainstream music. You’ve got James Blake too, who’s changed the conversation in pop music.
“Flick on the radio,” he adds, “and rock is the safest thing you’re going to hear. Rock was always about a punk attitude. Death Grips are dripping in attitude, and more ferocious than most metal bands at the moment. I love rock, and picking up a guitar is what makes me want to make music – I’m definitely not saying that’s dead – but we need to evolve it, and use some of the tools and tricks from hip-hop, R&B and pop to do that.”
One place where rock still reigns, though, is on stage – though that could have posed problems for a band who wrote an album without a thought for how it would translate in the live arena. “I’ll tell ya, the first week of practice was hilarious,” Simon laughs. “If anyone had heard us trying to play these fucking songs they’d have though we were a new, unsigned band – it sounded terrible.”
For all of that, when push comes to shove, Biffy Clyro remain a rock band through and through. “We’re a different proposition live. Even the prettier songs growl that bit more, and the new ones end up sitting a lot closer to the others. I still think the power of guitars and a fuck-off drumkit is hard to beat. The best DJ, up there with his laptop – even surrounded by the greatest light show in the world – can’t compete with people physically making things happen.
“I’ve never lost faith in a distortion pedal and a guitar, Colm,” he smiles. “I’ll blow any fucker away.”

Ellipsis is out now through Warner.