‘With a little love, we can conquer all,” Simon Neil croons on Biffy Clyro’s opening song A Little Love, over its huge, infectious arena-rock chorus. It’s a line that feels like a mantra for the Scottish band 30 years and 10 albums in: they’re currently touring 2025’s Futique having come through a rough period. They experienced major burnout, band members fell out for the first time and founding member James Johnston pulled out of this tour due to mental health and addiction issues. But their new songs feel rooted in renewal, reconnection and newfound purpose. Neil pays tribute to his departed bandmate on the urgent and zippy Friendshipping, which is an ode to the importance of maintaining such relationships.
Futique was recorded in Berlin; the band said that the ghosts of Bowie, Iggy and Nick Cave’s the Birthday Party “bled into the songs”. No such art-pop apparitions feel present tonight. Instead there’s a rousing pop sensibility to these new tracks. Goodbye is a slow-burn ballad that explodes into an arms-aloft anthem, while Shot One embodies the band’s knack for merging sugary melodies and meaty riffs – existing in the blurred middle ground between rock, pop and metal that they comfortably own.
