Thursday, 1 October 2015

Chvrches - Every Open Eye


Rating: 5/5

Review:
A cracking album



I think this is a cracking album.  I have only recently come across Chvrches after listening randomly to their performance of Leave A Trace on Radio 1 Live Lounge, which was excellent (and is available on YouTube, by the way) – and was enough to persuade me to try this album.  I am very glad I did.

These are very well crafted melodic songs which remind me strongly of some of the great synth bands of the 80s – OMD and Vince Clarke's various outfits came strongly to mind, and the songwriting is approaching Vince Clarke's standard, which is very high praise.  The songs are often singable but certainly not trivial, with a musical depth and intelligence behind them.  Lyrically they are very good, too -  slightly off-beat and allusive some of the time which I like a lot.  Lauren Mayberry is a good singer with a deceptively breathy, rather little-girly voice which she uses with real skill and genuine power sometimes, the synth work from Ian Cook and Martin Doherty is very impressive and the production is excellent.

In short, this is a fine album of very good songs, very well performed.  I'm delighted to have discovered Chvrches even if I am a bit late on the scene, and I can recommend this album very warmly.

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