Amid the electro-rock crunch of “Sorry, Etc”, Lauren Mayberry spits out, “I killed myself to be one of the boys/I lost my head to be one of the boys/I bit my tongue to be one of the boys/I sold my soul to be one of the boys”. The singer for successful Scottish indie-tronic trio CHVRCHES says her debut solo album explicitly expresses her feminine/feminist aspect, while also embracing pop. Lyrically, she nails it, but the music is not always as convincing.
Promoting for the album, Mayberry has namechecked a who’s who of female singers, including Sugababes, Lily Allen, Fiona Apple, Annie Lennox, and All Saints. The sound of Vicious Creature ranges from quiet piano ballads to hands-in-the-air stadium numbers, trying on multiple pop styles for size, playfully testing out the musical footprint of some of the aforementioned. She’s assisted in this by a commercially high calibre studio team, including ultra-successful US songwriter-producers Greg Kurstin and Matthew Koma. It should all add up to a killer album, but, for some reason, it doesn’t.
It's hard to pin down exactly why. There are moments when things achieve semi-sufficient lift-off, such as the bass-bounced groover “Punch Drunk”, the breakbeat-fueled epic “Sunday Best”, and the gently post-punk-ish funkin’ of “Change Shapes”. These ones make it over the wire. Just. When it does work, I'm reminded of the best solo material by Paramore's Hayley Williams.
More usually, however, the songs are just not sufficiently vivacious, hooky or sonically in-yer-face. From the Eighties-centric Laura-Brannigan-in-leg-warmers “Crocodile Tears” to the Nirvana Unplugged-ness of “Anywhere But Dancing” to the Sabrina Carpenter B-side-ish “A Work of Fiction”, one can sense what the makers are attempting, the targets they're aiming at, but they just can't quite hone in on the bullseye.
Below: Watch the video for "Something in the Air" by Lauren Mayberry
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