For a band that was supposedly born on the internet, Chvrches have had some growing pains to deal with online, too. In the days after their recent Glastonbury set, Lauren Mayberry, frontwoman of the Scottish electropop trio, is in a philosophical mood.
The Brexit vote result "felt a little weird for us" she says down a crackly phone line from Glasgow. "But it was interesting, because it felt like pretty much everyone at Glastonbury was of the same opinion – they were just all very concerned by what has happened."
Chvrches may essentially be a pop band, but since they emerged on the scene with their 2013 debut, The Bones of What You Believe, they have displayed a social conscience. Last year, on the cusp of releasing their second album, Every Open Eye, Mayberry penned a powerful op-ed for the Guardian, detailing the horrific misogynistic abuse that came her way after the video for the band's single Leave a Trace went online. Her willingness to speak out about something that many female musicians have to deal with has made her an inadvertent spokeswoman on the issue.
“I think it depends on the day,” she says of the role that has been thrust upon her. “Obviously, there are days that I wake up and I would rather that people just talked to me about the music that I’m making. I would rather that I would talk about that the same way as [her bandmates] Iain and Martin can, but ultimately they always get asked the music questions – they always have been, since we started the band.
“So I suppose it’s just a good thing that my bringing it up and creating that conversation has been constructive, and I’m not just getting asked, ‘So, what’s it like to be a girl in a band?’ I guess if we are going to have to talk about it, I would rather talk about it in a way that’s positive and not stupidly superficial, I suppose.”
Online meeting site
There have been advantages to the trio's rise via online channels. "Generally I kind of view it as an online meeting site. If you can be involved in the community that surrounds your band, that's a good thing; you just have to balance it and have a real life that doesn't involve playing shows and having people tell you how great you are. If you just lived in that world, you'd become an asshole, so I quite like taking a bit of time away from that when we're not on the road.
“I also think it’s important to foster that relationship between people who give a shit about what we’re doing in the first place. We were playing sold-out shows before we were even signed to a record label. Something like that doesn’t happen without fans and that’s a really powerful thing that you can’t manufacture.”
These days Chvrches are a bona fide headline act thanks to their vibrant, creative electronica songs, as heard on Every Open Eye. Their heads were not turned by the bright lights for their second album; instead they returned to their hometown and went back to basics.
“We went back to Glasgow to the same studio we’ve always worked in, which is in Iain’s flat on the southside of the city,” Mayberry says. “We just went back in with the idea of doing a record the same way we did the first one. We write and record everything ourselves, so it was nice to be as far removed from the industry as we could, at that point.
“On the other side, I guess, there was an audience for this record that wasn’t there when we were making the first one. It was done over a protracted period of time and what we had collected eventually became a record. This time, we went in specifically with the idea of making an album and I suppose that made a difference to how it sounds.”
The album is certainly bigger-sounding than its predecessor in many ways, with songs like the towering Bury It and the zippy bombast of Empty Threat. Many have perceived it to be darker thematically, too, but Mayberry is not so sure.
“It definitely had some of the darkest, most aggressive stuff we’ve ever written, but it also had some of the most hopeful and upbeat stuff we’ve ever written, and I liked that juxtaposition. I don’t really think that people are ever one thing; you can feel loads of different things all at once. I think for me, a lot of the stuff that was written on that record was done with the benefit of hindsight – so it came from looking back on stuff that had happened and feeling stronger for it.
“I think we definitely had a better idea of what we wanted the band to be this time. I think we also had an idea in mind – Iain and Martin, especially – for the production. We wanted to do more with less. We didn’t want to add more and more layers into every song and make it bigger. I guess we were trying to be more controlled about what goes into a song, and why.”
There is a balance to be struck between putting personal experience into your songs and maintaining a presence outside the band, a requirement that has become more pronounced as Chvrches have grown in stature. At the end of the day, she says, they are two albums deep into a career that wasn’t ever really meant to take off. All three members had been in bands of varying success before Chvrches, but now that they’ve landed on a winning formula, they are not taking it for granted.
Incredibly lucky “We don’t really take a big interest in the shiny stuff that surrounds the band, and I suppose the concept of fame is a pretty subjective thing,” she says. “We’re lucky enough that we can live a normal life when we’re not playing shows and on tour. I think that’s a good thing for me, psychologically; I don’t want to be ‘that person in that band’ all the time. But generally, we’ve been incredibly lucky with how people have connected with the band.
“I think when we’re away from home and touring and working all the time, the thing that makes it feel worthwhile is when you feel like you’re connecting with people. I’ve been in bands where it felt like what we did didn’t matter to anybody, ever, so seeing fans with tattoos of your lyrics doesn’t ever really get old.”
- Chvrches play Longitude on Friday, July 15th
