Based on the synthpop gold of Chvrches’ breakout LP, 2013’s 'The Bones Of What You Believe', you wouldn’t guess that two-thirds of the band spent the preceding decade playing sombrely tempered, alternative-rock music.
But prior to laying the foundations for Chvrches in 2011, synth-wielding producers Iain Cook and Martin Doherty had donned guitars for such Glaswegian rock bands as Aereogramme, The Twilight Sad and The Unwinding Hours.
Those days are now nothing but a distant memory, and once the pair hooked up with vocalist Lauren Mayberry, they spawned an unstoppable synthpop force.
That said, given the relatively drastic musical shift, they have some reservations about being labelled ‘pop stars’. “We don’t think of ourselves, per se, as a pop band,” Cook says. “I think that might be more of an ideological difficulty in accepting the perceived disposability of pop music. It’s by its very nature disposable, because it happens in the moment. Sometimes it’s something that feels great the first time you hear it, then it wears off really quickly.
“I feel like our music doesn’t have that disposability thing. Maybe it’s because we’re a bit older or something. We’re not writing music that’s so ‘now’ and ‘buzz’ and gone tomorrow.”
Cook’s misgivings aside, it’s easy to agree with him regarding the inherent substance of Chvrches’ songwriting. Despite having an immediate, crowd-drawing appeal that fast-tracked them onto club sound systems, radio playlists and festival main stages, the quality of 'The Bones Of What You Believe' doesn’t weary after repeated listens.
This is also true of the band’s second LP, 'Every Open Eye', which was released last September. “When I first got in the studio with Martin way back in September 2011, there was definitely a sense of wanting to lay aside that more brooding sound and do something that felt more like the kind of music we wanted to hear at the time and that we wanted to communicate with a larger audience,” Cook says.
“We were sick to death of playing to half-full rooms of really intense, bearded guys. Don’t get me wrong; we are those really intense, bearded guys and still love that music, but it’s quite narrow. We wanted to start doing something with no road map and no restrictions. And we just gravitated towards these sounds.”
Cook and Doherty might’ve conceived Chvrches as a means of departing from their stony-faced past, but a band with purely reactive foundations is unlikely to endure beyond the initial spark. With Mayberry leading the line, 'The Bones Of What You Believe' introduced Chvrches as a savvy songwriting collective, and 'Every Open Eye' cements their place at the forefront of contemporary electronic indie-pop.
It’s no surprise then, that Cook’s been interested in this sort of music for years. “I had bought a Minimoog Voyager synth that summer [2011], because I wanted to start doing more electronic music and I was drawn towards analogue synths,” he says.
“Some of my favourite music of all time is made by and inspired by that instrument – the Minimoog. I really wanted to get one and see what happened when it was in my studio. So Martin and I just focused on that and used that as a jumping off point.”
The pair were immediately taken aback by how quickly they found their groove. “The hooks that were coming out were just like somebody had turned on a tap,” Cook says. “The huge melodies; it was like, ‘where the hell did that come from?’ I’d never had that sort of collaboration and experience with anyone else in my life.”
'Every Open Eye' arrives two years after the band’s debut. During that time, Chvrches have risen from relative nobodies to globally revered, chart-topping touring musicians. Thankfully, the profile boost hasn’t diminished the trio’s prolifically constructive, creative dynamic. “We were on tour for two years pretty much solidly and hadn’t been in the studio together really, apart from two songs that we did [‘Dead Air’ and ‘Get Away’],” Cook says.
“We were absolutely desperate to get back in the studio again after all that time away, and almost immediately it felt like someone had turned on a tap again and we were writing one new idea a day. We surprised ourselves by the pace of writing this record.”
The rapidity of the creative process wasn’t the only surprise Cook encountered during the creation of 'Every Open Eye'. “The biggest surprise for me was how much Lauren stepped up lyrically and vocally,” he says. “We didn’t know what her lyrics were going to be like, thematically, tonally, and when she got properly into her swing, we were like, ‘wow – this is beyond what I was expecting'.
“It feels like a big step up from the first album. The lyrics on the first album were written a lot more collaboratively. But the second record, apart from one song, was exclusively Lauren’s vision for the lyrics.”
In his former musical life, Cook often felt constricted by the chosen genre territory. With this in mind, when Chvrches got to work on 'Every Open Eye', they refrained from nominating specific things they wanted to achieve, stylistically or otherwise.
That is, except for one essential alteration. “We wanted to have fewer elements in each of the songs, arrangement-wise, because we wanted the individual sounds to breathe, and for the arrangements to be more lean.
“Listening back to a lot of our favourite pop music from the past, particularly Quincy Jones [and] the stuff he did with MJ; those arrangements are so lean and they’re so tight and it’s all about the interaction between the rhythm of the drums and the rhythm of the vocals, and allowing those two things to play off each other without anything else taking away from that.”
Written by Augustus Welby
St. Jerome's Laneway Festival 2016
Fri 5 Feb - Harts Mill (Adelaide, 16+)Sat 6 Feb - Brisbane Showgrounds (16+)
Sun 7 Feb - Sydney College Of The Arts
Sat 13 Feb - Footscray Community Arts Centre (Melbourne)
Sun 14 Feb - Esplanade Reserve And West End (Fremantle)
