When Chvrches frontwoman Lauren Mayberry announced her new solo venture last year, it was clear there were some things she needed to get off her chest. After a decade fronting the Scottish synth-pop trio, the singer had long wrestled with the cognitive dissonance of trying to be “one of the boys” while simultaneously speaking out on the industry’s pervasive culture of misogyny. “Being the only girl and the only woman in so many bands was a very lonely experience a lot of the time,” she told fans recently. “I internalised a lot of things and it’s strange to start unravelling some of that.”
With ‘Vicious Creature’ Mayberry attempts to make sense of all the things she “couldn’t or wouldn’t write in the band”, as she shared with NME. Within that safe space, she discovers a spectrum of previously unexplored emotions with free rein to play outside the boundaries of Chvrches’ electronic soundscapes.
A fiery undercurrent immediately tears into the new material with anthemic opener ‘Something In The Air’, a rousing cry for reason after an unnamed but “pretty iconic” British musician spouted conspiracy theories in her company. Things take a retro u-turn with the kitschy ‘Crocodile Tears’, a funky New Romantic-indebted bop that delivers delicious zingers like: “Maybe I’m a villain, but I find it kind of thrilling when you cry.” The foreboding ‘Mantra’ also finds Mayberry relishing in the album’s shadowy corners, her warped repetition of “I want, I want, I want it” totally absorbing in its trance-like refrain.
The theatrics continue on the fist-pumping ‘Punch Drunk’ and pouty ‘Change Shapes’, though their respective zigzagging basslines feel a little too reminiscent of a vaguely late 2010s girl power pop whimsy. The riot grrrl ruckus of ‘Sorry, Etc’ and sunny radio beats of ‘Sunday Best’ falter slightly here, too, an exercise in reviving familiar influences while lacking a contemporary edge.
Tender piano ballad ‘Are You Awake’ and the deeply vulnerable ‘Oh, Mother’ are the most obvious gear shifts, revealing the soft centre of an artist whose voice rarely comes down to a whisper. The sonic range on display is certainly a stark departure from the twisted world of Chvrches’ thrilling 2021 album ‘Screen Violence’, but at times, it can feel more like an ideas workshop than a bold artistic statement.
It seems even Mayberry was caught off guard by these mixed impulses when she was ready to come out swinging, and that can leave things lagging when Chvrches have always charged ahead. But Mayberry is indeed on her own path of solo discovery, and that leaves plenty of room to be excited about what lies on the road ahead as she digs even deeper into her solo artistry.
Details
- Release date: December 6, 2024
- Record label: EMI