The Scots in Chvrches put out The Bones of What You Believe, their first LP, in the summer of 2013, to rapturous acclaim; it featured confirmed hitters “The Mother We Share” and “Recover,” both tracks that established the band’s synthy, arena-filling sound. Ten days after the album’s release, though, the band found itself embroiled in a mini (read: faux) scandal: Lauren Mayberry, the group’s lead singer, had written an op-ed in The Guardian denouncing misogyny, and people lost their minds.
“What I do not accept,” she wrote, “is that it is all right for people to make comments ranging from ‘a bit sexist but generally harmless’ to openly sexually aggressive.” With everything that’s happened since—#GamerGate, the rise of the alt-right and open white supremacy, Trump’s election to the presidency—that earlier controversy has come to seem quaint. “I guess we're lucky in a way,” Mayberry says earlier this month when I met her and the rest of the band at a cafe in Greenpoint. “We said one thing about feminism…It kinda forced our hand, in a way.” They were way ahead of the curve. “Now we fit more with what the current conversation is, but there were definitely a few years where it felt like people were fucking coming for me, because I hadn't abided by the agenda or whatever.”
And she’s still not abiding by it on Chvrches’ third album, Love Is Dead, a tightly woven, synth-heavy collection of arena-ready pop songs. While it’s by no means a political record, it has been shaped by Mayberry’s politics, because she’s the group’s main songwriter. “I think a song like ‘Graves’”—which has the chorus “Oh baby can you look away / while they’re dancing on our graves?”—“is probably more obviously political than the previous stuff that we've done, but I don't think we went and wrote a record for manifestos or whatever,” she says. “I feel like it's quite a hopeful record, but it's about sitting with that kind of struggle and frustration and confusion and anger, or unhappiness, and then figuring out what to do with it.” Even so, writing the record came easy; most of it was written in a small New York City studio, and then recorded in L.A. “More than anything else, I don't really remember the nuts and bolts of when we were recording it,” says Martin “Doc” Doherty, who plays synths and sings backup. “I remember the really soft light [coming] off of all the keyboards... being surrounded by them. And I was very moved and emotional about what we were doing, and then writing songs very, very quickly as a result,” he said.
Those sessions were also the first time the band had worked with a producer—after trying out five or six, they settled on Greg Kurstin, who produced Adele’s megahit “Hello,” and has worked with artists like Beck, Tegan and Sara, and Kelly Clarkson. “But we have conversations after the bad sessions and we had a conversation like the end of the first week working with Greg, where we were like, ‘That's the shit right there. Let's do more of that,’” Mayberry says.
For Chvrches, though, Love Is Dead won’t become real until they’re performing it live, to a crowd of screaming fans. For them, the road is where the record is actually forged. “Right now it's no man's land,” Mayberry says. “We're rehearsing again, so that feels nice, but it's kinda abstract. And there were a few weeks where I was like, ‘Oh, I feel like I work in marketing.’” The time between recording an album and hitting the road is anxiety-producing. “There was a moment of anticipation around like just coming out of hiding, because we had like a nice year where it was just the three of us writing songs and trying be creative and figure shit out,” Mayberry says. “And nobody was telling me what my problem was and calling me a bitch.”
Before the last American presidential election, Chvrches went on a group radio show in Ohio. I couldn’t find exactly what she said—even now, content can be ephemeral—but Mayberry assured me that the Trump joke she made didn’t go over well with a mixed audience in Trump country. (Judging by what she’s said about the president in public before, I can’t imagine it was particularly complimentary.) “Yeah, that was bad,” Iain Cook, the group’s synth player and guitarist, says. Mayberry doesn’t seem apologetic: “At this point, you can't say you don't think he's a racist. You can't say you don't think he's a sexist. You can't say you don't think he's transphobic and homophobic, 'cause he has shown us who he is.”
It used to be rare to hear any band talk this way, let alone one as famous as Chvrches; Trump’s election in 2016, however, has moved the goalposts for what musicians can say about their politics in public. The difference between then and now is pretty clear—Taylor Swift’s approach to politics, for example, follows the old-school playbook. She’s gestured at her political leanings before (remember the 1989 tour?) but since November 9, 2016, Swift has largely shied away from anything that might be deemed remotely controversial. That led to the alt-right claiming her as their queen and sparked a discussion about where the pop megastar’s politics really lie.
Mayberry sees it differently. “I understand they have a mass appeal and they've got a really big demographic to appeal to,” she says, “but at the same time, their music is loved by a lot of those people.” And then: “In this day and age, your silence speaks fucking volumes.”
While Chvrches certainly aren’t as big as Swift, their first album topped the Billboard independent chart and peaked at #3 on the alternative chart; their last album, Every Open Eye, debuted on the Billboard 200 at #8. They play stadiums around the world. To borrow a phrase the #Resistance likes: This is not normal. And yet, here at this coffee shop, Mayberry’s insight is so casually delivered that it takes a second for me to process what she’s said. Mayberry also has a question for the inevitable backlashers. “At this moment, you're saying, ‘Do you think that rape and rape culture is okay? Do you think that white supremacy is okay? Do you think that homophobia is okay?’ These are things I kinda feel we can all agree are not okay,” she says.
“I wish that were true, Lauren,” Cook interrupts. “I really do.”
And of course she’s right. We’re in that rare kind of cultural moment where everything is charged, newly political; if you don’t publicly support marginalized people, it’s more obvious than ever. Conservatives like to paint this as some kind of fascistic cultural hegemony that stifles speech, which is incredibly wrongheaded and shortsighted. The truth is much simpler. Because the Internet has made us so much more aware of people’s lives. It’s presented undeniable documentary evidence that some people have it much easier than others, that some people’s experience of the world is wildly colored by their race or their gender or their sex. That access has meant that consciously ignoring the wrongs society inflicts upon its more marginalized members has also become visible. Everything has consequences.
“Someone's having enough trouble in this current fucking world that we live in, and you can't be bothered to take two seconds to say a sentence that stands up for that person?” Mayberry says. And even though this doesn’t come out in the lyrics to Love Is Dead, it’s there at the shows. “You go somewhere and you have this experience as part of like a community and like a congregation almost,” said Mayberry. “And I feel like that's a really powerful thing. And ultimately at this point in time, maybe we need that more than ever before.”
Hair Stylist and Groomer: Benjamin Thigpen at Statement Artists
Makeup Artist: Ashley Rebecca for Giorgio Armani Beauty
