Biffy Clyro - A Celebration Of Endings (LP) - Picture Disc Vinyl

By the time A Celebration of Endings landed on 14 August 2020, Biffy Clyro had already spent two decades chasing the sweet spot between knotty guitars and arena-sized release. The Scottish trio, Simon Neil with twins James and Ben Johnston, didn’t soften their edges here. They sharpened them. Delayed from its original May date by the pandemic, the album arrived with a sense of pent-up energy, and then promptly went to number one on the UK Albums Chart. It felt like a band resetting the dial, not coasting on past glories.

Rich Costey, who also steered 2016’s Ellipsis, produces with a clean but muscular hand. You can hear it straight away on North of No South, a riff that bites but leaves room for Neil’s melody to float. The song sets the tone for a record that toggles between abrasive and tender, often within a single track. The Champ rolls in on stately strings and snapping snares, a little cinematic, then pulls the rug with a sing-along hook that should not work as well as it does. Biffy have always loved that tension. Here they make a theme of it.

Instant History, the first single, was a lightning rod for fans. Those glassy synth stabs and the drop-heavy chorus were a curveball, but the tune is huge and the band sound unafraid to let a pop flourish carry the weight. Tiny Indoor Fireworks, released when most of us were staring at our walls, arrived like a sugar rush. “I want to move on, I want to make it right,” Neil sings, and the lyric hit differently in 2020. So did the album title. This is not a celebratory record in the usual sense. It is about drawing lines, choosing what to leave behind.

Space is the heart-melter, a ballad that lifts on piano and strings without ever turning syrupy. Biffy have written torch songs before, but this one feels like a deep breath after the jagged edges of End Of and the spidery Weird Leisure. That latter track is one of the record’s most affecting moments, a portrait of addiction that rides a swaggering groove and then turns the mirror on itself. Neil spoke in interviews about channelling the sadness and chaos he saw close to home, and you can hear the care in how the chorus lands.

For all that, the band never forgets to be weird. Opaque finds flickers of their early math-rock DNA, stop-start changes that still stick in your head. Worst Type of Best Possible hides a knotty middle eight in plain sight. Then there is Cop Syrup, a closer that starts like a throat-tearing hardcore workout, spirals into a dreamy coda and leaves you in a heap. It is the kind of closing track that makes you flip the record back to side A and start again, which is why the A Celebration of Endings vinyl has barely left my turntable.

The album also exists as a brilliant time capsule of 2020’s strange performance world. With tours wiped out, Biffy staged a live run-through at Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom and streamed it worldwide. No crowd, just the band and a camera crew in a venue that usually shakes. It turned out to be a powerful way to hear these songs, especially The Champ and Space, where the room’s natural reverb gave the strings and backing vocals an extra lift. That show later surfaced as an official release, a nice companion to the studio LP and a reminder of how resilient this band can be.

Critical response backed that up. NME, The Guardian and Kerrang gave it strong notices, noting how the trio had found a fresh spark without ditching their bite. It helps that Costey keeps the arrangements taut. The guitars crunch, the bass punches, the kit sounds alive, and the orchestral touches are used like colour rather than wallpaper. You can trace a line from Puzzle and Only Revolutions through Opposites and Ellipsis to here, yet this record stands on its own. It is both a capstone and a springboard, especially given the way the next year’s The Myth of the Happily Ever After would pick up threads from these sessions and reframe them.

If you are crate-digging, the Biffy Clyro vinyl edition is the one to grab. The cut has room for the quiet parts to bloom and the loud bits to thump, and the packaging is sturdy without being flash. For collectors hunting A Celebration of Endings vinyl, or anyone looking to buy Biffy Clyro records online, this is a safe bet. I have seen a few copies float through a Melbourne record store or two as well, and it sits neatly next to other Biffy Clyro albums on vinyl. However you find it, spin it loud. Among vinyl records Australia wide, this is one that makes the room feel bigger, then smaller, then yours.