By Kevin Scott
It’s been a couple of weeks now since Chvches' debut album, The Bones Of What You Believe was released. Its entry in the top 10 was proof, as if it was needed, that the release was one of the most hotly anticipated of the year. You can imagine the A&R bun fight that accompanied the arrival of the band as being akin to the denouement of a Tarantino film. As it is, Virgin have released the album, and its highly polished electro-pop is harder hitting and more relevant than any pop album released this year.
The pedigree of the band is impressive with Iain Cook and Martin Doherty having played with Aereogramme and The Twilight Sad respectively, among many others in Glagsgow's vibrant scene. Their instrumentation is precise, full of interesting layers of drums, synths and samples, and when the silken voice and sharp, occasionally sneering lyrics of Lauren Mayberry enter the fold, the perfect electronic storm is created. There’s big energy and even bigger hooks abound throughout.
The Bones of What You Believe starts with ‘The Mother We Share’, undoubtedly one of the singles of the year. It’s the only way the album could have begun. Progressing, ‘We Sink’ catches from its opening bars and doesn’t let go. “I’ll be a thorn in your side until you die,” sings Mayberry, a typically semi-sinister lyric that pierces. ‘Gun’, meanwhile continues in the same vein: “You better run from me with everything you own / because I’m going to come for you / with everything I have.”
With such an intense sound created, it can be easy to overlook the depth of the lyrical narrative. The advice is: don't. There's much to be gained by being attentive while your feet pound.
The swooning drum beats on ‘Tether’ as Mayberry sings about “chasing things we should run from” before a huge synth driven chorus sweeps everything as drums crash seems to have been written for dance floors the size of aircraft hangers while still sounding intimate. ‘Lies’, ‘By the Throat’ and ‘Recover’ are further proof of the band’s songwriting abilities. The echo of “And you know you don’t need me” on Recover is gut-punch painful before the chorus surges up from the depths and sweeps you away again.
As may be expected, the album loses direction slightly when the boys take over vocal duties from Mayberry on ‘Under the Tide’ and ‘You Caught the Light’. If anything, it serves to underline the power of Mayberry’s captivating performance.
And it’s perhaps the strength and familiarity of the singles that make some of the second half of the album a little stretched at times. ‘Night Sky’ and ‘Science/Vision’ feel prosaic in the context of what surrounds them, but this is a band who have created huge energy through being emotive without being melodramatic, and achieving a sound so sharp it’ll sting.
Fresh from a world tour supporting Depeche Mode (a band that have clearly influenced Chvrches, instrumentally at least), and with their own headline tour underway, the rise of the band is indisputable, as is the quality of this record.
