NEW YORK (AP) — The start of Lauren Mayberry as a solo artist needs to be marked by one thing like a wolf cry. And that is precisely what it appears like.
The vocalist and percussionist from the Scottish pop band Chvrches has punctuated her debut album with a playful howl whereas telling off an ex-lover on the track “Crocodile Tears.”
“This moment in time is exactly the chapter where I get to howl like a wolf in a song if I want to. And I don’t have to feel weird about it,” she says.
Mayberry, 37, is having fun with the liberty to create no matter she likes, away from the synth-pop of the band she has been with since her early 20s.
“It’s a mission statement of all things that you like, and you just go in and write the song that feels like it wants to be written on that day, which was quite refreshing,” she says.
The 12 tracks of “Vicious Creature,” out Dec. 6 by way of Island, veer from the espresso home folks of “Anywhere But Dancing” to the punky “Punch Drunk,” the dance-pop of “Change Shapes” and stuttering glam of “Sorry, Etc.”
If Chvrches — with members Iain Prepare dinner and Martin Doherty — normally works first with melodies and manufacturing earlier than lyrics, Mayberry wished to reverse the method.
“I knew that I wanted it to be more focused on the storytelling,” she says. “It was nice to be able to go into a studio with a title idea or with a concept and then work back from that.”
Mayberry cites Sinead O’Connor, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple and Annie Lennox as influences. She credit the yodel inflection in her voice to having listened to a lot Alanis Morissette.
“It was those influences I wanted to dig into a bit more in my own material,” she says. “After I thought again to what are the important thing influences on me as a author, it isn’t actually numerous synth-pop stuff. So then it’s attention-grabbing that that’s what I turned so related to.”
Mayberry labored on her new album with producers Greg Kurstin, Matthew Korma, Tobias Jesso Jr., Ethan Gruska and Dan McDougall. She began writing in spring 2022 and had studio periods in between touring with Chvrches.
McDougall, who has beforehand labored with Sigrid and Jason Mraz, co-wrote and performed on 4 tracks and says he and Mayberry went into the studio hoping to push the boundaries.
“We didn’t really have one specific lane in mind for the genre we were going down,” he says. “We were just being experimental, and I guess the freedom within that just brought us something a bit different.”
One observe — “Sunday Best” — was partly impressed by “Once In a Lifetime” by Speaking Heads and by her mom’s sickness. “Maintain pondering sooner or later perhaps I’ll discover the wonder in goodbye,” she sings. The title comes from funeral garments.
“I thought I was finally writing a hopeful, cheerful, uplifting song, and then I was like, ‘Well, still about death, isn’t it?’” Mayberry says, laughing. “Maybe it’s a Scottish thing. I don’t know. We’re just a bit morose.”
On the album, Mayberry explores mortality, nostalgia, societal pressures, conceited exes and her band (“I killed myself to be one of many boys,” she sings in a single track.)
“The lyrics I like least that I’ve written are ones that I know didn’t feel very authentic to me,” she says. “I think you can hear in somebody’s physical voice when they’re singing, whether they mean something or not. So my only brief is like, ‘Does it feel fake?’”
No matter how the album does with critics or charts, Mayberry is proud it is on the market, proof of her musicianship and affirmation that she does not want anybody to make good songs.
“No matter what happens with this record, I feel like it was more about proving to myself than to anybody else. Because if you never try it, then you’re never going to know.”
The album ends with the somber piano-led “Are You Awake?” as Mayberry takes a tough take a look at her life decisions. Her pals have settled down — “Been counting their babies and their diamond wedding rings” — and her profession expectations are heavy: “Hometown hero is a poisoned chalice selection,” she sings.
“The top of that track opens up in a strategy to a query mark. And I believe that’s type of how I really feel about what is going to occur after the remainder of this,” she says.
Mayberry is not positive what’s subsequent for Chvrches. The three members have been engaged on their very own tasks and the door appears open for a reunion regardless of Mayberry spreading her wings.
“It’s hard once you’ve felt the wind in your hair to not enjoy that as an experience,” she says. “But my hope is that the two things can coexist. I do think that everybody getting experiences outside of the band will mean that we have different things to offer each other when we come to write again.”
