Jian Ghomeshi said it best during his CBC Q interview with the much-hyped Scottish buzz band: “Based on the speed of their rise, not to mention the sheer quality of what we’ve heard so far, Chvrches are skipping the word ‘next’ and going straight to becoming the ‘big thing.’”
Listen to Chvrches' interview on Q.
Without so much as an EP to their credit, Chvrches' Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty have become the indie darlings of critics from NME to Pitchfork to, yes, even CBC Music. But the electro-pop trio has delivered on that buzz, taking CMW by storm and winning the inaugural Grulke Prize at SXSW for best non-U.S. band.
“You know, that award thing, we had no idea that even existed,” Doherty told Ghomeshi, still sounding slightly baffled by the whirlwind of activity surrounding the group. “When we found out about it, we were completely taken aback. It was a total honour.”
But at first the band wasn’t even sure if the award was real or a hoax.
“We found out through the internet, through Twitter or something; I thought it might have been a prank to be honest, but there’s been an official followup email so I don’t think it’s a joke anymore,” Mayberry said.
Even though Chvrches seem to have come out of nowhere, the band’s roots go back to 2003. Cook and Doherty played in various groups together before finally settling down in 2007 to collaborate on a project of their own — though, according to Cook, it took four more years to fully get it together.
“The beginning of it was just sitting down in the studio, no road map, let’s just see what happens,” Cook said.
Their electro-pop sound naturally morphed from the bands they were already listening to, including Mayberry’s band, Blue Sky Archives, whose EP Cook was producing.
“I gave Martin a sneaky listen to one of the tracks and immediately we were like, 'Let’s get Lauren in for some of the backing vocals,' and that led to being the lead vocals,” Cook said.
Mayberry, who at 25 is the youngest member of the group, is also, arguably, the most uniquely over- and underqualified to be a lead singer: she already has a law degree and a master of journalism.
“People have been talking about that a lot on the internet, and nowhere does it say I was actually a good law student or journalist,” Mayberry joked. “I was never one of the people to put all my eggs in the musical basket because it just seems like such an unrealistic thing to rely on.”
Chvrches’ success may be just the thing to prove her wrong.
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