Biffy Clyro triumph with more than a little love as they hit The O2 in London without bassist James Johnston.
Smooth seas don’t make great sailors. Ahead of the release of Futique last year, Biffy Clyro told Kerrang! that its creation had included a road of rediscovery and reconnection, of really taking stock and examining just what – and who – they were. One of the finest things about the resulting album was how it showed this ever-impressive band at their urgent, honest best.
Ahead of this grandstanding tour – at which they’re headlining The O2 for no less than the fifth time – it was announced that the mental health challenges bassist James Johnston revealed he’d been working through had led to a decision to sit out the jaunt. Though the presence of the shirtless ginger four-stringer to Simon Neil’s left is noticeable by its absence, it’s also this band’s great strength to lean into such things. In doing so (and with no small amount of applause owed to Empire State Bastard’s Naomi Macleod who takes on the job brilliantly), tonight it highlights both the unvarnished emotion, vulnerability and beautiful determination at the heart of their music.
Those arriving early enough to catch The Armed are faced with an altogether different challenge. Namely, getting their heads around a band so wilfully difficult and joyously weird in a place like this. Which, actually, is half the point wherever they are. It’s also a very, very funny situation. Though many are left stunned by the Michigan art-hardcore maniacs, plenty also realise the best thing to do is just submit and go with it. As they collapse into a wall of feedback at the end, there’s both confusion and smiles. Job done.
“People used to say to us: where’s your bassist, you Cockney pricks?” SOFT PLAY’s Isaac Holman informs The O2 from somewhere in the middle of the pit. “No no, we’re from Kent.” Also, there’s no need. The singing drummer and his guitar-toting comrade Laurie Vincent have long proved that they’ve got more than enough volume, gobby attitude and LOLsome laddish charisma between the two of them. The gnarly riffs of Mirror Muscles and Act Violently’s cartoonish aggression see the pair finding their bounce, before getting a ‘Mon The Biff’ chant and calling for an all-girl pit for a double-airing of the 13-second Girl Fight. Once again, they arrive like they’re looking for trouble, and leave having delivered double-barrelled fun instead.
It's a marked contrast to how Biffy turn up. Hidden under white sheets that hang over the entire stage like a giant bedsheet-castle, as A Little Love begins, they appear as enormous silhouettes before, as the song properly rises halfway through, the veil is lifted to reveal an enormous structure of stairs and platforms. Hunting Season follows, bathed in grand lighting, before Simon’s jagged riff to That Golden Rule arrives in a blur of strobes, bolstered by glorious stabs of live violin. Later, the visuals during Space make it look like it’s raining. As arena spectacle goes, it only reinforces what we’ve already known for years now: Biffy do it very well, and very classy, and very creatively.
It can’t overshadow just how intimate and filled with human vitality they can make such a huge stage feel, though. Some of the show’s best moments are in the most stripped-back parts, like the aching, acoustic Machines, played by Simon alone, or when, on a twitching Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies, they simply see red and run on pure adrenaline. The sing-alongs to Black Chandelier, or Bubbles, or Mountains, or the ‘Woo!’ at the start of The Captain are simple joy itself on their own.
Of course, there is a ’mon absent. “This is a song specifically about friendship,” says Simon by way of introduction to Friendshipping, dedicating it to “our brother in arms, James”. It’s not the same as it might have been, but the music Biffy make is so often for when you’re chewing on life’s gristle. ‘Love's truest meaning lives when you're not there,’ goes the line in Space, taking on a new meaning tonight. And just as Futique navigated a very hard inward look, what would already be one of the finest arena shows you’ll see from a British band is tanged with something similar. Like the album, it’s a water they navigate with dignity, grace, love and joy, with brotherhood at the fore, doing James, and themselves, proud.
