‘I twisted myself into a pretzel to please people’ | Global News Avenue

Lauren Mayberry is a peacemaker.

She has been the lead singer of Glasgow band Chvrches since 2011, topping festival bills and album charts with her signature twisting synths and screeching melodies.

Mayberry was the band’s baby – she was just 23 when she joined, a few years younger than her bandmates Iain Cook and Martin Doherty.

But their chemistry was instantaneous. Chvrches’ debut single ‘The Mother We Share’ was written and recorded in 48 hours using only three synthesizers, but it became a critical hit, earning them airplay on BBC Radio 1 and Passion Pit and Depeche support. model.

In the media, they were careful to present themselves as a band where each member was paid equally. But Mayberry said she was concerned about becoming a junior partner.

“I’m always aware that I’m younger than other people and they have more experience,” she said.

“They went to music school and I didn’t. So I always felt like I was at a disadvantage in terms of where I was in the hierarchy.”

This feeling was amplified during the 2019 tour of Australia.

The schedule had the band taking a four-day break in Melbourne, and Mayberry was looking forward to spending the downtime with her bandmates and crew, until she discovered they had made separate plans and she was stuck in her hotel room.

“I remember feeling really upset and hurt about it because I was always worried about other people and looking out for everyone, and it was a humbling moment,” she said.

“In the end, I rented a car, drove to a spa town in Australia, listened to Taylor Swift’s ‘Cruel Summer,’ and cried.”

Looking back, she feels that being the only woman on the tour put an “emotional burden” on her to make the show work.

“I feel like sometimes I twist myself into a pretzel to make everyone happy.

“Then I’ll look back and think, ‘Are you happy?’

“Not really, but I’ve been keeping the peace.”

After the incident in Australia, she considered leaving the band. Then the pandemic hit, and Chvrches ended up working on their fourth album, 2021’s Screen Violence , remotely.

A year later, she finally took the plunge, but not before signing a new record deal with her bandmates, ensuring the project’s future.

“I realized it would give people a sense of security because I had made a commitment,” she said.

“I don’t know how it actually works, but that’s my hope.”

She was keen to stress there was no animosity between the parties: Martin and Doherty had given her their full support. Still, it’s only natural for someone leaving a band to define themselves in opposition to that music – otherwise what’s the point?

As Mayberry succinctly put it: “I didn’t want to make a crap record that was a rip-off of Chvrches.”

During recording sessions, she would flinch when someone would bring out an old synthesizer. Instead, she pursued a more organic, lyric-first approach.

But after a decade together as a trio, the instinct to compromise is deep-rooted.

“I’m very used to arguing my point of view and then trying to understand other people’s points of view,” she said.

“So it was a real learning curve of, ‘No, this is my opinion and if I don’t think it’s right, then it’s not right and the conversation is over’.”

The result is Vicious Creature, an album that showcases new depths in Mayberry’s voice, which fluctuates between vulnerability and venom while paying homage to her pop heroines.

She channels the spirit of all the saints in album opener something in the air; and borrowed the staccato sampled strings from Annie Lennox’s “Walking On Broken Glass” to power the single crocodile tears.

The latter was an angry riposte to an emotional manipulator, with Mayberry snarling: “What a man will say to get his own way/Always crying wolf, so I’m sad/I really don’t want to hear this from you, baby“.

The singer said her role-playing in the song was inspired by Velma Kelly in the musical Chicago or Sally Bowles in Cabaret ) of dark, subversive femininity.

It’s one of the few songs to survive from the first version of the album (tentatively titled “Novel”), which is “dark, dramatic and character-driven”.

Slowly, over time, more personal songs started to fit in.

The syncopated pulses of “Change Shapes” are a denunciation of sexism in the music industry (“I’m a doll in a box with a ball and a chain.”). Sorry, Etc tells a similar story, a chaotic mixture of garage rock and drum and bass.

“There were definitely songs that expressed frustration at best and some kind of hurt at worst,” Mayberry said of her music career.

The most intimate moment on the album is a gentle piano ballad called “Oh, Mother.”

In three verses, Mayberry chronicles the transformation of her relationship with her mother—from unquestioning love in childhood to loathing in adolescence, and finally the realization that their time together is limited.

“It breaks my heart to know you won’t be there for me“She sang softly.”Oh, Mom, what would I do without you?“

It was the last song written for the record, and the lyrics poured out after Mayberry’s friend and co-writer Dan McDougall sketched out the chords in the studio.

The singer got a little emotional while discussing the lyrics, which were inspired by a family illness.

“When you live in the shadow of something like this, it’s always in the back of your mind,” she said.

“I think about it all the time. When I go on tour I always think, ‘Oh, is this the tour I’m leaving on? I miss it’.”

“So the last afternoon in the studio was a tearful day… but then we went to Nando’s. So it’s all about balance.”

Mayberry said, Oh, “Mother” was a song she could never have written on Chvrches.

“It’s not a place we would go to emotionally or sonically,” she said.

“I think the best songs come when lyrics, meaning and sound are connected, but (with Chvrches) I was writing in a notebook and thinking, ‘This is never going to live up to what the band has built’.”

However, change is never easy. While some reviews have called the album “Popular Alchemy Master Class“, others said Mayberry”Still sounds like someone’s got a foothold.“.

Fans of Chvrches’ industrial sound have also expressed disappointment, but the singer has learned to distance herself from the criticism.

“When people say ‘Screw you,’ I rationalize it like this: You’re mad at me, but you’re mad at me because life is hard and our music makes your life a little easier for a while. And now you Would say, ‘Please don’t take it away.’

“When I was 24, it was overwhelming for me, but once I was able to differentiate it, it made sense.

“You represent something that means a lot to that person — so when you do something else, it threatens existing ideas.”

The other side of this equation is consistent. When Mayberry plays a song like “Asking For A Friend,” its reassuring mantra is: “you still matter”, she often saw “someone in the audience dancing and crying quietly”.

“When people cry, I cry too. Everyone asks, ‘Are you okay?’ But I’m just in the moment.

“But I hope that’s why I’m good at my job, because I have some kind of empathy.

“It’s inconvenient for my life, but hopefully it’s good for the crowd.”