Music Review: CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry makes feminist pop on debut solo album, ‘Vicious Creature’

NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Lauren Mayberry, frontwoman of the Scottish synth-pop band CHVRCHES, liberates herself from preconceptions on a punchy debut solo album, “Vicious Creature.”

Mayberry’s striking voice has been central to CHVRCHES’ electro-pop since the trio started making music together in 2011. It is sharp and distinct, a key instrument used alongside Iain Cook and Martin Doherty’s synths to create a sound that has endured throughout the subsequent decade. Now, her soprano voices feelings and experiences uniquely hers — adding a fire to a project all about ownership.

“Must be something in the air,” she declares on the album’s opening track. And later: “Too much noise might leave you on your own.”

Throughout the album, she explores past relationships, family, the music industry and memory.

“I killed myself to be one of the boys,” she sings on “Sorry, etc.” bluntly listing the concessions she’s had to make in order to exceed in the male-dominated music business. “I bit my tongue to be one of the boys/I sold my soul to be one of the boys,” she continues, the chorus morphing into a confessional chant. Above drums and piercing electronic production, the song is all angst and theatrical flair — particularly on the final, whispered verse — and feels distinctly Mayberry.

On “Change Shapes,” she details how and why that self-sacrificing happens. “I change shapes till I get what I want from you,” she sings over a bouncy guitar and steady percussion. “Punch Drunk” is just that, a lively song atop analog crackles and loose riffs. “Mantra” uses a warbled beat to a hypnotic effect, as Mayberry takes on an enemy.

Those moments — the ones where Mayberry brawls, heard in her lyrics and the wolf howling back at the boy crying wolf in “Crocodile Tears” — are some of the album’s best.

But there are dialed back moments as well — quieter songs, the furthest from her work with CHVRCHES — and they come with their own revelations.

Those songs, like the acoustic guitar led “Anywhere But Dancing,” and piano ballads “Oh, Mother” and “Are You Awake,” are anchors for the project. They serve as reminders that “Vicious Creature” was motivated by Mayberry’s desire to center her storytelling as a soloist, the parts, it can be assumed, suppressed in her previous pursuits.

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