As mentioned before, the band’s Brixton Academy residency will take up 4 nights in September, you can search for any remaining tickets here. The new instore dates will come before these gigs; right around the album’s release. The first will be at Kingston’s famous Banquet at PRYZM on August 18^th (that’s right, before the album’s release), closely followed by a night in Brighton at Resident at Chalk on the 19^th (release day, very exciting), before finally concluding back in London at Rough Trade East on the 23^rd. Tickets for all 3 shows can be found here.

Al Doyle, one of the band’s many multi-instrumentalists, explained the album’s inspiration in a press release, “The idea of being out of control is always there in dance music, in a positive sense.” Frontman Alexis Taylor added, “By the time we were able to be back together, we were turning on a tap and having a lot of ideas being poured out quite quickly.” While everyone was commenting on the album, Joe Goddard, again a multi-instrumentalist, also decided to add, “We were living through a period where it was very easy to feel like people were losing control of their lives in different ways. There’s a darkness that runs through a lot of those tracks.”

 In my opinion, Hot Chip have earned their title as one of the UK’s arguably more underrated dance groups. They may not have reached the festival-bill topping heights of a group like Disclosure, but their energy and consistency always lend themselves well to touring and performing. So, in the words of Selector Dub Narcotic, “No matter what the dancefloor, Hot Chip has the answer.”

Biffy Clyro will play a special acoustic show for @RadioX on 18th January 2022 at Hackney Church, London. Tickets on sale this Friday – more info at https://t.co/SDhf2kcWWx pic.twitter.com/EhOwtz2YH1

— Biffy Clyro (@BiffyClyro) December 13, 2021

The show will be paired with a performance in Kingston the following day, at Banquet Records venue Pryzm. See here for full details on Biffy Clyro’s tour dates. Both shows will take place before the band embark on their long-awaited European tour after it was postponed to February of 2022 due to COVID-19. In a statement regarding the delays, the band said they, “can’t wait to get out and see you all as soon as it is safe for everyone to be together again”.

Regarding their new album, The Myth of The Happily Ever After, lead singer Simon Neil explains, “The liberation of doing anything that you had any control over last year was a thrill in itself, we couldn’t leave the house, we couldn’t go shopping, no one could see anyone they cared about – so the only freedom we had was in these ideas and these songs.”. The album came only 13 months after their previous LP A Celebration of Endings, in a very welcome surprise to fans. Recorded mostly before lockdown, Celebration didn’t quite reflect the ideas the band were going for. So, in an interview with NME, Neil explains how the pandemic sent them straight back to the drawing board for another stab at just what they wanted to be released in today’s day and age.

This isn’t the first time the band have taken a more stripped back approach to their performances, in November 2017 they embarked on a string of acoustic shows, ending the tour at London’s iconic Roundhouse for their own MTV Unplugged session. The show was then released in May the following year and clearly scratched an itch the fans may not have even been aware of. The album topped the UK Vinyl Albums Chart that week, with a few special appearances like a cover of The Beach Boys’ Classic “God Only Knows” and particularly niche Puzzles B-side “Different Kind of Love”.

See below an acoustic version of their 2013 single “Black Chandelier” Live from The Roundhouse.