Biffy Clyro

This is something of a homecoming show. A success story, if you will. Biffy Clyro started playing in the somewhat smaller town of Kilmarnock, in a very small pub right next to the Civic Theatre called the Kay Park Tavern. The Kay Park seated much less than a hundred highly inebriated punters with divergent musical tastes in a low ceilinged, which had a smoked film of tobacco brown Artex, busy room. The twenty somethings who often attended there were soon to rant about the 'Iname' demo passed from PC to PC on cheap CD-RW discs.

Now almost ten years later and just off a series of sold out dates across the UK, Biffy Clyro have came just northeast of home to play a triumphant return show after garnering just a morsel of the success they deserve, to the biggest audience, discounting festivals, the band have ever played to.



With Mountains gaining the highest ever peak on the charts for the band, it's not surprising that the audience have a little more of a disposable income, fresher faces and an optimistic disposition than those encountered at a Biffy gig in years gone past, and that's a good thing. For a band who have always had a grasp on writing some of the most commercially viable Neo-Grunge hook lines and choruses in recent memory to have not hit such a peak already seems a little off-kilter.

Now, starting by saying that a band have been more commercially viable in a year than in years past does not discredit Biffy. In fact, they have an almost macabre fascination with trying to tilt the major label see-saw. Opening the show behind a huge curtain leaving the uninitiated a gasp is one way to achieve just that. Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies is not the cheeriest message to instigate a show with, but when the curtain dropped and the song moved into it's stomach churning last stretch I thought I just heard Guy Ritchie's family open their Christmas gifts.



Speaking of joy, it's obvious just how much Simon Neil has evolved from Stow College hopeful to T in the Park veteran and now, arena showman. His career has not just seen his artistry take on it's on life but Neil has had to achieve this while suffering aspects of change in his personal life. Behind the beard and the tattoos and the ever lengthening hair is someone who, at least on stage is way happy with how things are going.

Playing with an all-girl string quartet and performing a short acoustic interlude which included, Folding Stars we are privy to just how good a songsmith Neil has become but when brothers James and Ben Johnston return and we're back for some Glitter and Trauma its obvious just how fundamental the brothers are to Biffy's success. Ben Johnston is one of the most unusual drummers ever to sit on the stool. His intuitive rhythm, and use of the basic parts of the kit outshines most metal drummers that would use quadruple the equipment, screaming out an incredible vocal line in response to Neil every so often. James is a solid bassist and a great harmony singer, his voice able to drift between Neil's over-Scots accent and Ben's gritty counterpoints often unifying the two or effortlessly gelling with either on different harmony parts. It's true that this band are more than the sum of their parts.


With a firm grasp of the audiences attention and battering through material like they're paid by the bar they blitz through a set that should cement this band as one of the most important British bands of the last decade.

Nirvana-esque dynamics and Tool time signatures, from all out post-Grunge classics like Justboy to Mountains itself. Biffy Clyro, with the help of Warner Bros. are about to light the world on fire. With a new album on the way, a likely set at T and/ or Glastonbury and the possibility that the aforementioned label are very pleased with the Ayrshire lads, you can't help but wonder just how big it could get as you walk away humming 57.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.