The blissful electro power-pop of Chvrches‘ debut, The Bones of What You Believe, was one of the more ubiquitous sounds of 2013 and last year. Just over a month ago we reported they’d finished recording their follow-up, so now it’s proper exciting to see them back on the radar with the first taste of their newly announced album, Every Open Eye.
Leave A Trace, the first single from the album, finds vocalist Lauren Mayberry caustically ripping into some bloke who clearly didn’t treat her very well: “You talk far too much for someone so unkind…” It’s one of the more direct messages the Glaswegian three-piece has put to record: a ‘middle finger mic drop’, as Mayberry puts it.
The band promises a more stripped back feel to a lot of their new album, but atop a typically effervescent synth romp, it all remains pretty maximalist. Light-and-shade is one of the many basic things these charming Scots have done so well, and Leave A Trace serves a very enticing appetiser for what’s to come.
Here’s the tracklist for Every Open Eye, due out September 25 via Liberator Music/Goodbye Records:
1. Never Ending Circles
2. Leave A Trace
3. Keep You On My Side
4. Make Them Gold
5. Clearest Blue
6. High Enough To Carry You Over
7. Empty Threat
8. Down Side Of Me
9. Playing Dead
10. Bury It
11. Afterglow