Peacemaker Lauren Mayberry.
She has been fronting the Glaswegian band Chvrches since 2011, and their signature flurry of distorted synths and razor-sharp tunes has helped them top festival bills and album charts.
Mayberry was the band’s baby; she was only 23 when she joined and years younger than Martin Doherty and Iain Cook.
However, they immediately connected. They composed and recorded The Mother We Share, Chvrches’ first single, in 48 hours using the three synths they had. Despite this, it became a viral sensation, gaining them support slots with Depeche Mode and Passion Pit as well as exposure on BBC Radio 1.
They meticulously positioned themselves as a band in the media, giving each member equal attention. However, Mayberry claims that being the junior partner caused her anxiety.
“I was always conscious that I was younger than the other guys, and they had a lot more experience,” she recalls.
“I hadn’t attended music school, but they had. Because of my position in the hierarchy, I constantly felt like I was at a disadvantage.
An Australian tour in 2019 heightened that sentiment.
According to the timetable, the band would have a four-day break in Melbourne. Mayberry eagerly anticipated spending time with her bandmates and the crew, only to find herself stranded in her hotel room upon learning they had made other arrangements.
“I remember being very upset and hurt by that because I was always worrying about everyone else and taking care of everybody, and it was a humbling moment,” she recalls.
“In the end, I hired a small car and drove to an Australian spa town, where I had a little cry while listening to Taylor Swift’s Cruel Summer.”
Looking back, she believes that she had to bear the “emotional labor” of keeping the show going because she was the only woman in the touring party.
Sometimes I think that in an effort to please everyone, I turned myself into a pretzel.
“After that, I would reflect and ask myself, ‘Were you happy?'”
“Actually, I was merely maintaining harmony.”
Following the incident in Australia, she contemplated quitting the band. Following the COVID pandemic, Chvrches produced their fourth album, Screen Violence (2021), remotely.
In order to secure the project’s future, she signed a new record agreement with her bandmates before making the decision a year later.
“I was conscious it would give people a sense of security that I’d made a commitment,” she explains.
“I don’t know that that’s how it actually works, but that was my hope.”
She wants to emphasize that there is no animosity because Cook and Doherty have fully supported her. However, it’s normal for a band member to define themselves in opposition to the music they were a part of; otherwise, what’s the point?
“I didn’t want to make a crap knock-off Chvrches record,” Mayberry states concisely.
When someone took out a vintage synth during recording sessions, she would shudder. Rather, she went for a more natural, lyrics-first strategy.
However, after ten years together, the tendency to compromise became ingrained.
“I’m accustomed to stating my position and then attempting to understand other people’s perspectives,” she explains.
“Therefore, saying, ‘No, this is my opinion, and if I don’t think it’s right, then it’s not right, and that’s the end of the conversation,’ was a true learning curve.”
Weeping wolf
The end product is Vicious Creature, an album that honors Mayberry’s pop heroines while showcasing new facets of her voice, which veers between tenderness and venom.
She uses the jagged, sampled strings of Annie Lennox’s Walking On Broken Glass to power the single Crocodile Tears, and she embraces the spirit of All Saints on the album opener Something In The Air.
In the latter, Mayberry snarls, “What a man will say just to get his way / Always crying wolf, so I’m sad to say / I don’t really wanna hear it from you, babe.” This is a violent response to an emotionally manipulative man.
The vocalist claims that she is role-playing in that song, drawing inspiration from Sally Bowles from Cabaret or Velma Kelly’s dark, subversive femininity in the musical Chicago.
The initial iteration of the album, initially titled Fiction, featured several tracks that were “dark, theatrical, and character-driven”.
More intimate tunes gradually began to enter the mix.
Change Shapes’ rhythmic pulse denounces the misogyny of the music industry (“I’m a doll inside a box, with a ball and a chain”). Regretfully, Etc uses a frantic mix of drum & bass and garage rock to tell a similar tale.
“There were definitely a few songs where it was at best expressing frustrations and at worst [feeling] kind of hurt,” Mayberry says of her musical career.
Oh, Mother, a subdued piano ballad, is the most personal moment on the record.
Three verses depict Mayberry’s connection with her mother, ranging from the unwavering love of childhood to teenage contempt and, ultimately, the realization that their time together is limited.
She sings softly, “It kills me to know you won’t be around,” though. “Oh mother, what will I do without you?”
After Mayberry’s friend and co-writer Dan McDougall drew out the chords in the studio for the final song on the record, the lyrics just came to her.
The singer becomes a little upset when talking about the lyrics, which were influenced by a family sickness.
“When you’re living in the shadow of things like that, it’s on your mind all the time,” she continues.
“I consider it constantly. I always ask myself, “Oh, is this the tour where I’m gone and I miss it?” when I leave on tour.
“Well, that final afternoon in the studio was really tearful. After that, though, we visited Nando’s. Therefore, the key is to maintain equilibrium.
Mayberry remarks, “Oh, Mother is the kind of song she could never have written in Chvrches.”
“It’s not a place that we would go emotionally or sonically,” she continues.
“I think the best songs happen when the lyrics, the meaning, and the sonics interlink, but [with Chvrches] I was writing things in my notebooks and thinking, ‘This is never going to fit with what the band has built’.”
However, transformations are never straightforward. Some critics have described the album as a “masterclass in pop alchemy”, while others have stated that Mayberry “still sounds like someone finding their feet”.
Despite dissatisfaction from fans of Chvrches’ industrial sound, the singer has learnt to keep her distance from criticism.
“I explain it this way when people say, ‘Screw you.'” You’re upset with me, but that’s because life is difficult, and our music temporarily eased your burden. “Please don’t take that away,” you say now.
“That overwhelmed me at 24, but compartmentalizing it made sense.
“You represent something important to this person, so when you do something else, it threatens that reality.”
That equation’s opposite occurs simultaneously. Mayberry frequently notices “someone in the audience having a wee dance-cry” when she plays a song like “Asking For A Friend,” which has the comforting message, “You still matter.”
“And I cry when others cry. ‘Are you ok?’ everyone asks, but I’m just in the moment.
However, I hope that my empathy is the reason I perform well at work.
“It’s inconvenient for my life, but hopefully good for the crowd.”
