Chvrches on the trauma behind new album Screen Violence: ‘I became obsessed with mortality’

In March 2019, a year after Chvrches had entered the mainstream with their third record Love Is Dead, they teamed up with the bucket-wearing American producer/DJ Marshmello for dance pop hit Here With Me, which tallied more than 15 million views on YouTube and became their most successful song ever.

But on the heels of wild success followed a string of the band's darkest days. Following the news that on his next single Marshmello would be collaborating with Chris Brown – who was found guilty of felony assault following an altercation with Rihanna back in 2009 – Chvrches shared a statement which said they were “confused, disappointed and upset” by Marshmello’s choice of collaborators. “Working with people who are predators and abusers enables, excuses and ultimately tacitly endorses that behaviour. That is not something we can or will stand behind.”

Brown responded by calling the band “a bunch of losers, these are the type of people I wish walked in front of a speeding bus full of mental patients”. His fans were equally as vile, sending the trio countless death threats while frontwoman Lauren Mayberry was the target of rape threats. As a result, the band had to increase security as they finished up touring Love Is Dead across America.

“It's not lost on me that after 2019 I became obsessed with mortality,” 33-year-old Mayberry tells me today, Zooming from her LA apartment and visibly uncomfortable about what happened. “I was made to think about my demise in a way that was quite jarring, but I also had to continue doing promo and playing shows. People can say ‘it’s just words on the Internet, it’s not reality’ but if you read enough things in a day about how people want you to exit the world, it’s not so good for your mental well-being.”

Now, anytime she’s remotely worried about anything or is suffering from a hangover, she has the sort of crippling existential crisis that ends with her thinking about the death of herself and everyone around her. “Those experiences definitely informed what we wanted to do next,” she continues.

At first, that was a three-month break, the longest since the band had formed in 2011. Then it was the brilliant new album Screen Violence out later this month. If Love Is Dead was a record about the need for kindness and reconnecting with the world, their fourth is about “a lack of empathy” according to Mayberry.

She says: “2019 sucked the cup dry and I had to process the anger, the sadness, the loneliness and the fear.” The ongoing media coverage - photos of Mayberry accompanied by snappy quotes about her being terrified of trolls – only fed the misogyny. It’s just one example of screen violence that their aptly named new album wrestles with.

She wasn’t the only one suffering either. Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Martin Doherty has struggled with anxiety and depression since he was a teenager but spent that entire US tour “hiding in the most remote corner of some venue, making music on my laptop,” in a bid to escape what was going on in his head. One day he wrote something called “piano drum ting” that eventually became How Not To Drown, a haunting, emo track featuring The Cure’s Robert Smith – a collaboration that came about after the band cold emailed The Cure’s manager about possible support slots.

Taking to Instagram the day it was released, Doherty explained how “today is the proudest moment of my life in music. Confirmation that even when things seem like they’re at their worst, something good can grow. I may never entirely conquer my mental health issues but they can be a catalyst for something positive. If you feel like giving up, don’t.”

Screen Violence isn’t a pandemic album. Yes, it was mostly written and recorded over the past year and the trio had to do everything remotely (the band's producer Iain Cook still lives in Glasgow while Mayberry and Doherty have moved to America) but the band became “a protective shell” from the outside world. “No one cared about us, because everyone was busy managing their own sh_.” The result “is the best thing we’ve ever done,” says Doherty, not caring about sounding conceited. He’s probably right about the gutsy pop record as well.

While the songs were inspired by that life-altering trauma, “ultimately the album became about finding hope and perseverance,” says Mayberry.

Formed a decade ago, the band knows a thing or two about persevering. Coming through at a time where the British music scene was full of lads with guitars and fans suddenly had the ability to tell artists exactly what they thought, thanks to The Internet, Mayberry felt like she had to act like one of the guys to survive.

Today, she “wonders what my personality would be if there had been more women around at the time.” Realising that if you spoke enough of the language, then you would be accepted and left alone, she set about “playing harder, faster and arming myself with more knowledge of obscure Fugazi b-sides. You had to be the first to deploy the foulest jokes.” After years of trying to fit in or disappear into the surroundings though, the early success of Chvrches found her front and centre. Suddenly “I couldn’t blend in anymore.”

All three had come from different DIY punk bands in Glasgow but the switch from angsty guitars to chirping synths hadn’t come without its detractors. “I remember hearing the weirdest rumours about our band in a pub in 2012,” says Mayberry, the whispers of industry plants and million dollar investments clearly not a new thing. “If they were true, I’d have been wearing much nicer shoes,” she adds.

Following the release of their debut album in 2013, Mayberry wrote an open letter for the Guardian about the explosion of online misogyny she was now facing. “Objectification, whatever its form, is not something anyone should have to ‘just deal with’.”

“It's interesting because gender and “feminism” has always been part of the conversation around our band but I've never written about it lyrically,” she starts, suggesting that was “maybe a form of self-defence.”

It’s easy to see why she’d be guarded as well. Every time the band have spoken up about rape threats, misogyny or the fact that Hatebreed’s vocalist Jamey Jasta didn’t like the fact they were booked above Gojira at Deftones’ Día De Los festival, they’ve received even more abuse back.

Today, Mayberry makes a point of the fact she hasn’t spoken out on social media in a while. “I knew I needed to not engage with the world in the same way anymore. I don’t want to play the victim card, straight white women’s tears are not anything we need to be worrying about right now, but it is sad.” Instead of taking a public stand and putting herself at risk, Mayberry would “rather take those lemons and put it into Screen Violence lemonade”.

The glitching 80’s funk of lead single He Said, She Said is a blatant exploration of the vastly different expectations of gender (“Get drunk but don't be a mess. Look good but don't be obsessed”) while the unreleased stadium epic of Final Girl sees Mayberry imagine the survivor of a horror film. After enduring all that trauma, “you know she should be screaming” in the final scene. The idea that she maybe could have avoided all the horror in the first place if she’d “changed my accent, tried to make myself more attractive” leads perfectly into new single Good Girls, which feels like a companion to The Cure classic Boys Don’t Cry.

Full of twinkling synths and their signature choppy vocals, the track is reminiscent of their first album and feels like “a nursery rhyme that slowly gets more f__d up”. It’s about how “you're always told that bad things won't happen to good girls but that's just not true.” From having to be polite in a bar to someone you have no interest in talking to, to how you navigate your work environment to walking home with your keys between your fingers, “as a woman, you're constantly having to negotiate for your right to exist. I feel like I've done a lot of that negotiating in my time and it didn't make a f__ing bit of difference”.

“So yay, a fun pop song for everyone,” she adds with a grin. “At least you can sing along to it.” The band never sits down to write something with a message, the song and melody always comes first with Mayberry adding the lyrics later.

Screen Violence is the first time she’s written without holding herself back but initially, those direct lyrics were only temporary. “A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have written (the lyrics to Good Girls) and I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to keep them in because it would just feel like another stick to beat you with,” she explains. So what’s changed?

Well, “the only reason you would edit it out is because you’re scared about potentially alienating the fans. But, at no point will a male lyricist ever have worried that talking about their life and their experiences would alienate female fans so, in the name of equality, let's just shut our eyes and see what happens.”

The track also tackles cancel culture. The opening line, “killing your idols is such a chore” was written after a night in the pub where Mayberry was part of a long conversation about whether it was ok to still listen to a certain artists music following allegations of sexual assault.

“We spend so much more time talking about the reasons it's okay to hold on to these men because of the music that they made, that we love, than we do about why you might not want to listen to them anymore,” she explains today, pointing out that for some, “it’s an academic argument about something that will never affect them.”

Despite all the success, all the backlash and all the debates raging in their mentions, Chvrches are still the same emotional, empathetic and hopeful group they’ve always been. Their new album is one of staying true to your aspirations, regardless of the world around you because, as Mayberry explains, “you have to satisfy yourself, otherwise you'll never be satisfied”.

“We are disruptors”, adds Doherty “All we care about now is making this band the best and the biggest thing it could possibly be, but doing it on our terms. And if you go right back to 2011, you will have heard us say the exact same thing.”

Even now, with the band established and with regular touring, “we’re still a bit fucking scrappy,” she says with a grin. “You’d think we would have grown out of that by now but it's an important thing to hold on to, because people connect to that. A lot of the music industry is really unapproachable for most people but we come from outside that space. We’re not ever going to change our identity to try and fit in,” she adds. “I still wear sh_ shoes.”

Screen Violence is out August 27