There hasn’t been a band so readily embraced and yet so readily critiqued than Scottish synth-pop act CHVRCHES.
On the one hand, the band’s innovative mix of 80s synthpop stylings coupled with modern production and genuinely brilliant songwriting has won them legions of fans the world over. The band are also arguably one of the biggest catalysts to the popularity of the synth-wave movement. On the other hand, the band’s willingness to be openly political, especially in regards to issues surrounding the treatment of women, has earned them a lot of scorn from the more conservative-leaning sections of the synth-pop fanbase who likely took to them because of their decidedly retro leanings. What’s undebatable though is that CHVRCHES are one of the biggest success stories of the previous decade and a huge part of that is their second album Every Open Eye.
Released five years ago this September, Every Open Eye had every possibility of being the “difficult second album”. The Bones of What You Believe had been an unlikely commercial success, creating huge pressure on the band to deliver something far above and beyond. The band didn’t let that get to them, however. Instead of producing Every Open Eye in a fancy big studio, they returned Alucard Studio in Glasgow, Scotland – the same studio where The Bones of What You Believe had been recorded. This time though, things were on a more ambitious scale. While The Bones of What You Believe had been recorded with only a select few hardware synthesizers as well as samples and loops for drums, for Every Open Eye the number of tools that were used in the studio expanded massively. More hardware, including some analogue drum machines, were used to make the music more organic. That’s something that comes across very well in Every Open Eye; whilst the production is razor-sharp and modern, there are still little analogue oddities, distortions and human elements that make the otherwise very electronic music feel like there’s a real human soul at the heart of it all.
That humanity is something that is at the heart of Every Open Eye and is something that has carried through in all of CHVRCHES’ music since. Whilst Lauren Mayberry’s vocals have always been incredibly emotive and deeply personal – as well as clever and inventive -, the organic feel is something that in this album managed to transfer across to the other elements of the music. ‘Afterglow’ is undoubtedly the best example of this, with its lush analogue pads creating an epic Brian Eno-esque backing for Mayberry to pull off one of the best vocal performances of her entire career. It is mad to think that at one point this song was almost scrapped from the album! ‘Down Side Of Me’ has a similar kind of soul too. Mayberry’s beautifully-sung vocal (along with some great harmonies from keyboardist and guitarist Martin Doherty!) is backed up by gorgeous warbly synths and gritty percussion loops from analogue drum machines to create a compelling dark pop expanse that is arguably one of the best parts of the album.
While Every Open Eye is very much steeped in washy, analogue synth-pop, ‘Playing Dead’ took the CHVRCHES sound in a very different direction. Stripping some of the synths back in favour of adding some electric guitars and bass guitar along with the addition of choppy vocal samples, it is an altogether much more modern-sounding experience that moves more into the vein of a band like Crosses as well as giving a view back into Iain Cook and Martin Doherty’s past as members of the post-rock band Aerogramme. It has also got a chorus that’s very 2010s pop, much more so than any of the other tracks on this album. Maybe this was a foreshadowing of ‘Miracle’ on Love Is Dead, a song which very much took CHVRCHES into contemporary pop territory?
Of course, you can’t discuss Every Open Eye without talking about ‘Bury It’. Arguably the album’s biggest hit and a song that got a rework a year later with the addition of Paramore’s Hayley Williams, it is a song that’s rightfully stood out as a pop classic of the 2010s. It still sounds as fresh five years later as it did when it came out, despite its very obvious 80s synth-pop influences in its songwriting and production. You can’t discuss this album without talking about ‘Leave A Trace’ either, another classic 2010s pop track that was as catchy as it was controversial and has stood the test of time. You could make a point that both the big hits, ‘Bury It’ and ‘Leave A Trace’, are representative of the two sides of CHVRCHES; ‘Bury It’ is full-on 80s synth-pop worship, while ‘Leave A Trace’ is a much more modern-sounding song that signposts towards later work like ‘Miracle’, ‘Deliverance’ and the Marshmello collaboration ‘Here With Me’. If Every Open Eye is not already regarded as a classic pop album, it should definitely be in the future.
Where CHVRCHES had laid the groundwork for their modern interpretation of the synth-pop of the 80s down on The Bones Of What You Believe, Every Open Eye was the album where they refined it. It’s a much more organic, soulful and human album than The Bones Of What You Believe was and it is the launching pad from where the band progressed further into the territory of more modern pop with Love Is Dead. It’s full of brilliant songwriting, brilliant production and gave us two songs that are arguably era-defining when it comes to the 2010s. Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty created a masterpiece with Every Open Eye and I doubt there are very many synth-pop fans who would disagree with me.
Words by Robert Percy
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