CHVRCHES

[HNB]

I am late to the party. I am in love with Lauren Mayberry's voice. It reminds me of how my daughter sings.

Not sure if people already are in and done with the group, but I just stumbled into her voice and their music and it was so nice of a stumble I wanted to share the fall.

[Embenny]

Huge fan of their first couple of albums. Have been less enamored with their recent output. Was really into them from around 2015-2017 from what I recall.

[HNB]

I listened to that song she did with Robert Smith and really dug it. She did a duet with Death Cab for Cutie that is one of my favorite renditions of Two Brothers in a Hotel Bed.

[JSett]

I listened to that song she did with Robert Smith and really dug it. She did a duet with Death Cab for Cutie that is one of my favorite renditions of Two Brothers in a Hotel Bed.

I read somewhere that she asked Robert Smith to contribute and he was quoted as jokingly saying something along the lines of (and I'm paraphrasing from memory and likely got it wrong)... "well, if you're gonna rip me off you might as well have me actually singing on it!"

How much truth is in this I couldn't possibly say, but it's a great story nonetheless

[burpgun]

Not sure I buy the idea of CHVRCHES ripping off the Cure. Early Depeche Mode maybe, but the band only started really featuring guitar on the last couple of records. Still, the track with Smith is the best thing he’s been a part of in years.

CHVRCHES started out extremely strong and I’m not sure they’ll top that again. Chasing the charts wasn’t kind to them, the new album is better and they really should stick to doing it all themselves.

[JSett]

Not sure I buy the idea of CHVRCHES ripping off the Cure. Early Depeche Mode maybe, but the band only started really featuring guitar on the last couple of records. Still, the track with Smith is the best thing he’s been a part of in years.

He might have been referencing the track in question, rather than their entire sound as a whole.
I don't know. I've never even heard a Chvrches song, that I'm aware of.

[cestlamort]

I really loved their first album, liked the second; I haven't spent much time with the next two. (I liked Aereogramme, so it was cool when they did this, and wikipedia says one of them was in the Twilight Sad, who are worth exploring).

Their recent "lost boys" cover is pretty great.

Their Song Exploder episode is interesting, too.

And, it's pronounced "Chuh-verr-ches"

[HNB]

Good Girls is pretty new and I dig it.

https://youtu.be/du4kNAyjVCg

I don't know about them ripping off anyone's sound. I don't listen to them and think "OH they are knocking off _____." They have a poppy techno sound, but so do a lot of alt groups nowadays?

[HNB]

Reading concert.

https://youtu.be/yYq851yxBqM

This is that first Death Cab performance I had ever seen with her in it. Had no idea who she was, but I really liked her voice.

https://youtu.be/fvD1QZ0hemk

[s_mcsleazy]

from what my mate told me, one or two of them moved to glasgow recently and i'll probably see them around.

never actually listened to them though...... dunno why

[MechaBulletBill]

i don't know anything about them except that they have one of the best band tshirts ever

[fever606]

I’ll be that guy…

Their first album was great. Second was… passable but ultimately forgettable. The third album was objectively bad and I regret buying it in a “what if they realised that Every Open Eye could have been good?” delirium. But instead they did the opposite.

Perhaps sadly, I’ve sworn them off and haven’t bothered to listen to anything off the new record. Reports tell me this was a wise decision on my part.

Dig into their back catalogue… it just gets better the further back you go!

Also… Sean, I believe that Iain and Martin were both living in Glasgow prior. If they’ve moved back, I’ll allow that there’s potential they could move away from the Adele-producer-involved atrocities of the past.

[HNB]

I only know their music from YouTube so far. I am assuming it is feeding me a mix of their popular stuff. I can take or leave the poppy techno like music, but I really adore her voice. There are a couple singers for me like that where I just really enjoy their voice regardless of the music. (Ben Gibbard, Michael Stipe, Thom Yorke...) People whose voice always seems to catch my attention.

[Embenny]

I only know their music from YouTube so far. I am assuming it is feeding me a mix of their popular stuff. I can take or leave the poppy techno like music, but I really adore her voice. There are a couple singers for me like that where I just really enjoy their voice regardless of the music. (Ben Gibbard, Michael Stipe, Thom Yorke...) People whose voice always seems to catch my attention.

I'm very much with fever606. Their early stuff just had a rawness to it that they lost over time and, in my opinion, that was much of their appeal. Lauren Mayberry had never been a leader singer before (I think she was a drummer in her previous bands IIRC) and when you see old live performances, she could get really shaky and underconfident at times. But the positive side of that coin was that the way she approached writing her parts was informed by a naiveté of sorts. As they got more popular and she got more used to being front and center, it seems that her writing moved toward a more generic "80's-influenced indie synthpop" type of approach. There are just so many bands like that these last few years.

The first song of theirs that made me take notice was The Mother We Share, which is just a fantastic example of how songwriting and arrangement can make something fresh out of some pretty common influences.

They did some pretty interesting things on their second album too, like Leave A Trace. It's pretty apparent that she wrote vocals that were beyond her actual technical ability as a singer, like that jump up the 5th that the entire chorus hinges on. She cuts the note short live and they add a backing track to reinforce it, but instead of making me like it less, it makes me like it more. It was more of that, "Hey, I've got a great idea for this melody, and I don't think I can really pull it off live but fuck it, let's do it anyway" attitude that permeated their early songwriting. She stretched herself and they didn't ever consider autotune or lip synching, they just went for it and that's endearing to me.

Over time, they stopped writing things that were hard for her to sing as often. They still do the thing where they have her jump up and down by 4ths and 5ths but she's been practicing it for years and doesn't struggle as much. So they stuck with stuff that got easier and stopped adding in things that pushed her range or limits. It feels safe. It feels poppy and polished. And that means it doesn't feel like Chvrches to me.

Like on He Said She Said. It's the same tool set as the old stuff - the melody centering around the root note, traveling up and down the first three notes of the scale, dipping down to the VII and back to I, then jumping up from I to V to add energy during the chorus (and dipping down to VII to hide the fact that it's just a different permutation of Leave A Trace's melody).

The most interesting thing they've done in the last few years to me was called the Hansa Session. It's just a bunch of songs from their 2018album but arranged for acoustic instruments, and it really reinjects some interesting into them. Here's a live performance of one of those arrangements, Graffiti. It's more interesting than just linking the EP, but check it out if that appeals. Also, as a side note, that live performance is a fantastic example of how the SM7B can be the absolute wrong choice for someone's voice. It and/or the decisions made downstream of it are really unflattering, yikes.

[dinosaurkale->]

"never say die" is a fuckin banger