A year ago, CHVRCHES were at the precipice of what was a make or break year for them. A slot supporting Two Door Cinema club, a tour around America, and a debut album that critics and electro-pop fans had been patiently waiting on, loomed around the corner. A year on, and CHVRCHES have clearly taken the plunge, as in the midst of preparing for their highly anticipated Europe-wide tour, hectic promotions for their critically praised debut album “The Bones of What You Believe”, and fire alarms being set off by their smoke machines at the Anson Rooms, I finally sit down with Martin Doherty of CHVRCHES, to catch up and discuss what has obviously been an exciting year for the band.
“There was stuff that had to satisfy radio and singles, but over the course of a full-length you get to play around a lot more, and just get to weirder places and have more fun.”
“There’s been a few changes since last year…” exhales Martin, “We haven’t stopped touring since then.” Having toured around various continents with bands such as Two Door Cinema Club, and Passion Pit so early on in their career, the formative influences of these tours have clearly had a role in shaping CHVRCHES live performances. “Those guys were so good to us,” Martin humbly reflects, “It wasn’t the typical support situation you can get where the band can be stand offish, they were amazing. There was a lot of learning done on those early tours for us, just through trying to take the project out of the studio and into the live world. Last year has been about getting more comfortable, and learning what makes a good live band, certainly a good electronic live band because that was new terrain for a lot of us.” CHVRCHES certainly have been breaking new ground, graduating swiftly from a support act, to headlining sell-out gigs across the UK, and announcing a European tour for March 2014. Martin assures me that the changes between supporting and headlining slots have definitely been an improvement for CHVRCHES. “(There’s) More time to sound check.” He laughs, “I guess the key differences are that everything’s a lot more relaxed, and when you stand on stage you’re not standing up in front of anyone else’s crowd, which makes things a lot easier.”
Despite only just having released their debut album “The Bones of What You Believe”, CHVRCHES seem much more at ease with their agenda as a band, as the release of a full length record has allowed them to expand creatively, or as Martin puts it “There was going to be more depth on the record, a bit more exploration in terms of the sounds and ideas, stuff that you can’t necessarily get away with on singles.” The development of CHVRCHES music is apparent on their record as through songs such as “Tether” and “Lies” they sail away from their more poppy singles such as “Gun” and “Mother we Share”, into unchartered territory. “There was stuff that had to satisfy radio and singles, but over the course of a full-length you get to play around a lot more, and just get to weirder places and have more fun.” Martin explains. “The whole thing was kind of an ongoing process. We were doing it on a song-by-song basis, just following our noses in terms of what was exciting. I think we ended up with a body of work that is satisfactory to us in terms of creativity, but at the same time that still has a level of accessibility, which is important if you want to succeed.” And succeed they have, not only with their singles but with their unreleased songs, such as “We Sink” which was featured on the FIFA ’14 soundtrack. “It’s in the manager mode when you’re cycling through the menu.” Martin smiles “It keeps coming on… It’s pretty cool.” He cites this as his favourite song on the album, describing it as “more aggressive, it’s got that kind of marriage between aggression and melody which I think is one of our main strengths.”
With such a highly anticipated album, come soaring levels of hype, and as soon as I ask about whether or not they pay attention to it, Martin’s exasperated sigh immediately tells me otherwise. “Thankfully now that our album is out people have the impression of us that we always wanted them to have. We feel that people should be judged over the course of a full album, but it’s difficult, especially when a band breaks online, the way ours did. People listen to one song, and to them that’s everything there is to know about the band, and then they listen to two, and they piece it together song by song rather than in the old way.” Martin answers. However despite the tiresome connotations of being a “Hype Band” CHVRCHES still recognise it’s significance, “it’s an important thing to an extent, because it gets people talking about you early on… But if you don’t satisfy that quickly with something more substantial, it goes away as quickly as it arrives.”
Despite CHVRCHES futuristic synth-drenched music, I get the sense that they are struggling between the older, traditional ways of breaking a band, and the high speed Internet fuelled consumption of music that is so common in our day-to-day lives. “It would have been impossible for us to come as far as we have in such a short space of time without passing music around from one blog to another. Things spread a lot faster than they used to…” Martin considers. “One thing we’ve noticed is that it’s created a situation where we feel like we have to be everywhere at once. The old method for breaking a band would be to sign in the UK, then you’d work as hard as that for about six months and then you move to the US, Australia, Japan… Whereas we’ve kind of grown in all those places at the one time.” This thought suddenly cracks a smile on Martin’s face. “It’s a nice problem to have, not gonna be any complaints there.” With CHVRCHES biggest tour fast approaching on the horizon, it’s no wonder that there’s nothing to complain about, as it looks as though they’re in for their busiest year yet.
BLOOMHOUSE MUSIC 