It's gone past three and CHVRCHES are already late. The band are flying in from Germany and the mad rush across London has seen them encounter every obstacle the capital can place in their way. Finally, the door is thrown open and the trio crash into the room, a hectic tumble of apologies aimed in every direction.
Settling down, the band order some food and a handful of drinks. Mocking each other's choices, they seem to turn what must be a familiar routine into something fun, something new. Pulling a plate of chips towards her, Lauren Mayberry says with an exaggerated, almost self-mocking, Scottish gait: “Aye chunky chips… they cannae be beat!”
But then, they've every reason to feel relaxed. New album 'Every Open Eye' is a triumph, the work of a confident pop property flexing its muscles, broadening their palette while also refining, honing in on what makes CHVRCHES who they are. Following an extensive global tour for debut album 'The Bones Of What You Believe', the sessions for this new record came as a relief to the travel-weary band.
“We'd been looking forward to it for so long,” explains Martin Doherty. “We're first and foremost studio people. So as much as it's great fun playing live and travelling the world and meeting loads of people we're desperate to get back. We had lots of energy stored up, ready to go. Man, when we hit the studio we really hit the ground running – we really had a lot of stuff coming out of us really, really quickly.”
While initially harbouring some measure of anxiety about potential writer's block, it seems that CHVRCHES were able to pour their pent up creative energies into something entirely positive. “At the back of my mind I'm thinking that if I write a different song everyday then, hey, we'll have thirty songs in a month!” laughs Iain Cook. “Maybe we don't use any of them. As it turns out, we hardly used any of them. And the ones that we did use, we augmented and worked on together. It was all about getting rid of the fear of going back into the studio after two years having not seen the inside of the place for so long. Not worked together, not flexed those muscles. So having that in the tank was a way for us to come in and not be afraid and just see what happens.”
Despite encountering all manner of production talent while on the road, CHVRCHES took the decision to return to their Glasgow base for their new album. Pouring their resources back into the project, the band bought all manner of new kit, rapidly expanding the capabilities of their humble basement space. “It made sense for us to go back to Glasgow,” Lauren states. “I suppose the first album to second album time for any band is quite transitional and it made sense to us not to involve other people's opinions in that and just keep it in-house. Because Iain and Martin have production backgrounds, we can record at home. So I think it just stops other people having a hand in what the band actually sounds like. Which is quite refreshing, I think.”
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The lure of home comforts, it seems, was necessary to help ground CHVRCHES while they re-engaged with the songwriting process. “I think when you spend two years on the road it becomes very much unreal,” Martin explains. “It's exciting, it's unbelievable but it's not living in the real world. We were all keen to get back to where we started. Just getting back to writing and socialising and treating it a bit more like a job. Not in terms of the effort that we put in but the regime, a bit more structure in the day. And that helped us in every conceivable way – creatively, psychologically. Just to go back and touch base with all the things that were going on before any of the madness started.”
CHVRCHES now have a truly global profile, a band who are capable of drawing an international audience. With that in mind, the three piece have been offered a number of potential collaborations with big name writers, but have thus far rejected these in favour of something they have complete control over. “This is a band in the old mould,” Martin states. “Gets together, writes tunes, puts the tunes out, tours the tunes. It's really common place in the music industry to work with other writers, and it's a route to go for a lot of people, and it's something that makes sense to them. Not so much to us.”
“We felt that – as we always have, since the beginning – that having the ownership of everything that you do creatively means way more than the success that working with these guys would undeniably bring. An absolute guaranteed nailed on radio smash hit. If you say you get a radio hit on any level, but it was yours, from minute one to the last, feels way better than having a global five million seller that belongs to someone else. You're doing karaoke on someone else's tune. It's just not for us.”
Setting up in Glasgow, CHVRCHES were able to expand their sound with new technology, but their ultra-disciplined approach also meant that they were able to attack their second album with renewed tenacity. It may not sound like the most rock 'n' roll concept in the world, but organising work-flow has helped the Scottish trio retain and enhance their focus. “Just making better use of your time,” Lauren muses. “Because I suppose last time we were working in that one room, so even if I did go away and write lyrics I can't record a vocal demo. This time I can go away and record a vocal. So if we work a song up to a point and then I go away, write the lyrics, do a vocal demo, hand it back to them and they can think about how they can incorporate that into production. It just made it a lot more… two different spinning cogs, I guess.”
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This is a band in the old mould…
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Two concentric spinning circles, CHVRCHES has become a lean pop engine, one that can be hard on itself but also knows when to take a break, as Lauren points out. “Again, that's one of the benefits of working ourselves, because we're not beholden to someone else's studio schedule,” she says. “I think in that case you end up working really long days and banging your head against the wall because you need to get something. Whereas if there was a point where I was staring at the page or not getting anything I could go away and do something else. I could work on it at home and then we could record something else tomorrow. It takes that pressure off, I think.”
'Every Open Eye' is blessed with a rare energy, with a vitality that – at times – borders on the band's live performances. There's a freshness in the production, for sure, but it's also there in the songwriting, in the actual DNA of the group's music. “I think the end result, though, is – in my mind at least – that it sounds a lot more spontaneous than the first album, because we were literally firing ideas down really fast,” says Lauren. “Not to say that they were throwaway or weren’t as considered but we were able to work through them a lot faster and respond to really fast changes and discussions.”
The division between live and studio work is always difficult to maintain for any band. Given their enormous live schedule, CHVRCHES could well have taken the psychic space of an arena performance into their Glasgow studio. “Undeniably,” Martin admits. “But never at a conscious level, y’know. We were never writing for live, at any point. We were always writing for the best possible studio results, initially. And a lot of that stuff does translate naturally over to the live.”
Lauren adds: “We’ve been rehearsing a lot of the new stuff and they’re sounding a lot leaner, a lot punchier and bigger live which is exactly what we hoped would happen. We didn’t explicitly set out to do that.”
Much of the new record packs an emotional punch, with Lauren Mayberry at times using explicitly personal experience as the basis of her lyrics. It follows on from certain moments on their debut, and while not entirely unexpected it does, at times, have the power to shock with its sheer vital honesty. “I guess when we're writing – lyrically and otherwise – we want things to feel authentic,” she shrugs. “I, personally, have never been great at writing something that didn't feel personal to me in some way. Whether that's a personal experience or a personal perspective. There are some people who are really great at writing narrative stories about something that wasn't theirs. But I've never really been that good at that. But I think that's what makes it valuable to me in terms of delivering it at the shows or putting down the vocal on the record.”
“After a point it feels like the ownership transfers a bit, so when you meet people at shows or send us emails or talk to us online they talk about what songs mean to them and how that fits into their life and I think that's a really intense powerful thing,” the singer continues. “We put our emotion into it, and they found something in that emotion that wasn't the same but it connected and I've always thought that was interesting. Even when I listen to bands, albums I love or songs that mean something to me, it'll never mean the as much to me as what it meant to the person that wrote it but I like that. It's all about interpretation.”
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Sadly, though, CHVRCHES' motivations were recently given a rather sick and twisted interpretation by the users of the 4CHAN forum. Lauren Mayberry acted as the visual focal-point for the 'Leave A Trace' video, an extremely personal song she recently described as a 'middle finger mic drop'. Besieged by users of the controversial messageboard, the singer faced some disgusting, visceral misogyny. 4CHAN users beware, though: they've simply hardened the band's resolve.
“In a way, you paint a target on your back (by speaking out) but I don't buy into the argument people make, that by talking about it I'm giving them exactly what they want. I don't believe that,” she insists. “I think by you pretending it doesn't happen, and you ignoring it, you're just condoning it with silence. People tell you to shut up about it because they can't be bothered to read about it in their news feed – they are condoning it, with their attitude. So, I don't know. It's been interesting, since the other day. There's been a lot of positive stuff and there's been some negative stuff.”
“You shouldn't change how you feel,” she adds. “When I'm having a day when I feel positive and tough about it… you shouldn't change what you're doing based on what other people want to do. People are like, oh you're just giving them what they want. I'm like, no, because what they want is to intimidate you and scare you and to somehow make you change what you're doing by intimidation.”
Martin is clearly concerned with the way his band-mate, his friend is treated. It's something that both himself and Iain struggle with, and quickly offer support. “That's why you have to keep fighting it,” he urges. “This is in Lauren's lives – this is in our lives as well, to an extent – but you have to keep fighting this.”
“But I'm tired!” she pleads.
“And you are tired, and it's not easy, sometimes, but the minute that you change what you're doing on any level… that's a victory for them.”
Remarkably, Lauren seems able to see through the internet fog, to maintain some kind of perspective, some kind of clear way through. “We spent a lot of time trying to establish this as a band, to make sure it wasn't just people honing in on the female and not allowing the band to be a band. We spent a lot of time doing that, but for this video it made more sense for me to be at the fore because lyrically it's very personal, and ironically it's about personal experience to do with a man who kept telling me what to do,” she explains, before silently shaking her head. “The irony!”
Ultimately a horde of frustrated, pathetic young boys aren't about to hold CHVRCHES back. They've toured the world together, returned to Glasgow together and produced an incredible pop statement together – oh, and they've charged half-way across London for a few plates of chunky chips as well. Perspective, it seems, is always key.
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'Every Open Eye' is out now.
