While technically a companion work to 2020's
A Celebration of Endings
,
Biffy Clyro
's ninth studio album, the emotionally sanguine
The Myth of Happily Ever After
, stands on its own. Produced by
Adam Noble
and largely recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, the album bristles with a mix of frustration, anger, and yearning, all of which feel intrinsically linked to the turmoil surrounding the pandemic. It's a thematic state of emotion the band touched upon with
, but which they attack with a renewed sense of purpose here. Tracks like "A Hunger in Your Haunt" and "Unknown Male 01" are driving punk-prog anthems rife with a coiled and pent-up anxiety. Elsewhere, they take a more languid approach as on the shimmering "Separate Missions" with its crepuscular synth accents and falsetto melody evoking the paranoid romanticism of '80s bands like
the Fixx
and
the Jam
. Equally engaging are cuts like "Haru Urara" and "Existed," which find them dipping into '70s R&B grooves and airy post-punk balladry, respectively.
have long been a band of extremes, crafting esoteric art rock epics one minute and melodic punk singalongs the next -- all the while aiming for a broad, gladiator-esque level of catharsis. It's that grasping for a unified release and the creeping feeling that society may never break free of its constraints that drive much of
. As they sing on the album-ending "Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep," "Life is a sad song/We only hear once/Please give it all that you've got/Before the rhythm stops." ~ Matt Collar