Biffy Clyro – The Myth of the Happily Ever After – Red Vinyl Record and Live CD

Description

Biffy Clyro – The Myth of the Happily Ever After – Red Vinyl Record and Live CD

The Myth of the Happily Ever After came out of a period when Biffy Clyro's plans, like most people's, had been interrupted. Released in October 2021, it followed A Celebration of Endings with a more unsettled response to the events surrounding that album's release. Simon Neil and brothers James and Ben Johnston recorded close to home in Scotland, turning their rehearsal space into a studio. The result is an eleven-song record with recognizable Biffy force and melody, but also passages that let uncertainty, unusual sounds, and abrupt changes become a larger part of the music.

The band initially intended to finish material left over from A Celebration of Endings. Instead, a new record began to emerge, and the sessions took their own direction over six weeks. Ben and James helped convert the farmhouse rehearsal room into a functioning recording space, giving the project a different working environment from the band's earlier sessions in Los Angeles. That setting matters because the album feels closely connected to what the trio was experiencing at the time. Neil presented it as an answer to the preceding record's optimism, with vulnerability now taking a more prominent place alongside the band's familiar confidence.

DumDum opens with a substantial departure from a straightforward guitar-band arrangement, using soft synthesizer sounds built from samples of Neil's voice. A Hunger in Your Haunt then brings the more feral side of Biffy back into view. Witch's Cup supplies another readily identifiable melody, while Errors in the History of God gives the album room for larger rock drama. The contrast between those songs is part of the record's appeal: it can offer an accessible refrain, then move into a sound or structural change that makes the listener reconsider where the next section might lead.

Unknown Male 01 was the first song introduced from the album, and its extended shape gives the writing space to develop. Existed was especially important to the direction of the sessions, bringing a more inward expression of self-doubt into the band's sound. Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep closes the studio program with another expansive, audacious performance. These songs make The Myth of the Happily Ever After more than a second installment of A Celebration of Endings. They preserve the trio's ability to make large rock music while allowing a less certain emotional perspective to influence how that music is arranged.

This red-vinyl gatefold edition also includes A Celebration of Endings performed live at Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom on CD. The eleven-song live program runs from North of No South through Cop Syrup, with Tiny Indoor Fireworks, Space, and Instant History among the selections in between. That additional disc gives the relationship between the two albums a concrete musical form: the earlier songs in performance beside the new studio record that answered them. The package contains one red LP and one live CD, bringing together two connected projects without reducing either to a handful of highlights.

Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic

Release Details

Artist

Biffy Clyro

Album

The Myth of the Happily Ever After

Format

Red Vinyl Record and Live CD

Media configuration

1 LP + 1 CD

Original album release

2021

Label

Warner Records

Vinyl color

Red

Track Listing

Vinyl — Side A

DumDum

A Hunger in Your Haunt

Denier

Separate Missions

Witch's Cup

Holy Water

Vinyl — Side B

Errors in the History of God

Haru Urara

Unknown Male 01

Existed

Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep

CD — A Celebration of Endings (Live at the Barrowland Ballroom)

North of No South (Live)

The Champ (Live)

Weird Leisure (Live)

Tiny Indoor Fireworks (Live)

Worst Type of Best Possible (Live)

Space (Live)

End of (Live)

Instant History (Live)

The Pink Limit (Live)

Opaque (Live)

Cop Syrup (Live)