Chvrches‘ Martin Doherty and Jonny Scott have revealed to NME that the band are “90 per cent finished” on their new album.
The Scottish synth-pop icons’ last album was ‘Screen Violence’, which was shared back in 2021. After its release, they toured up until 2023 (including supporting Coldplay at Milan’s Stadio Giuseppe Meazza) and have since been on a break.
Last summer, they told fans that they had started work on a new album, and now, bandmates Doherty and Scott have told NME what fans could expect from the project, with Doherty saying it’s “the most fearless record” they’d ever made.
“We’re definitely not interested in repeating ourselves,” he said. “It’s diminishing returns if the fifth record sounds like the first. What’s the point? If you’re not taking risks now, then why do it?
“We’re at the point in our career now where if we get together to make a record, then we have to be really, really motivated to do it. We are. Jonny’s played on the whole thing and been in our pocket the whole time, so he’s very connected to it too.”
Doherty went on to say: “It’s going to surprise people, and I hope it’s going to delight them and rip some faces off. It’s quite hard, but not to the point where you won’t recognise the band. It’s still the same people and DNA.”
He also revealed that the album was made in Glasgow, as the band wanted the album “to still feel very British and Scottish”.
“When you look outside and see rain and anger, you write the rain and you write the anger. That’s where our heads are at,” he explained.
Speaking about their decision to go on a hiatus, Martin told us: “What I knew with certainty is that Iain [Cook] and Lauren [Mayberry] were excited to do their own projects in the short-term. I completely respected it. If I could have been honest with myself then I would have felt the same way, but I was terrified.
“We’d been on the road for 10 years after making four records – bang-bang-bang-bang – we’d just come through COVID and on paper we had everything we’d ever wanted, but they said, ‘We want to do something else for a year’. I was completely lost. I’d poured every ounce of my identity and time into this thing. We didn’t split up, but overnight it disappeared,” he explained.
“I like certainty and my fear of the unknown is pretty full-on! All I was looking at was unknowns, in tandem with crises everywhere I looked in my personal life,” he added. “These songs weren’t for Chvrches, but I didn’t think they’d be for this. I’m not a solo musician as I find that unfulfilling.”
It comes as the duo launch their new rave-indebted project The Leaving, which was formed after they both found themselves living in Los Angeles, going through difficult times. You can read the full interview here.
Meanwhile, in the time that they have been on a hiatus, Mayberry dropped her debut solo LP ‘Vicious Creatures’ in December 2024, which was given a three-star review from NME: “Mayberry is indeed on her own path of solo discovery, and that leaves plenty of room to be excited about what lies on the road ahead as she digs even deeper into her solo artistry.”
She has also joined forces with IDLES‘ Joe Talbot, Death Cab For Cutie, and The National‘s Aaron Dessner. The latter saw them record a cover of Frightened Rabbit‘s ‘Who’d Kill You Now?’ for ‘Tiny Changes’ – a commemorative tribute album for the band’s late frontman Scott Hutchinson.
As for bandmate Iain Cook, he shared a remix of The Cranberries’ 1993 track ‘Linger’ the summer before, and in 2022 teamed up with Scott Paterson formerly of Sons & Daughters, to launch the project Protection.
News that Chvrches’ hiatus was over also came as the members teamed up and performed together for the first time in two years at a Death Stranding 2: On The Beach celebration event last summer.
