Lauren Mayberry didn’t want to play it safe artistically on her adventurous new solo album, Vicious Creature. But she didn’t want her real life to be in danger before the supporting tour even started literally.
When we talked on Zoom to the CHVRCHES singer and solo artist, the Scottish singer/songwriter was sitting comfortably in the Los Angeles-area home she stays in when working stateside. And unless you’re blissfully unaware, there are some massive fires in the area.
Luckily, though some of the fires “are not crazy far away,” her evacuation order had been lifted a few days before we talked. And her cat seemed utterly unbothered by the events.
The occasion for the chat was Mayberry’s pending solo tour supporting her new album, a more pop-oriented affair than anything from CHVRCHES, though also more personal than anything from the densely layered synthpop greats. She took a risk, and it paid off, yielding a catchy but intimate piece of work.
And why not? Mayberry was just 23 when Chvrches formed in 2011. Her bandmates, older by several years, called many of the shots. After over a decade, she was ready to assume control of her destiny, a project culminating in an American tour that launches this week.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s talk a little bit about Vicious Creature. There’s a strong contrast between this album and the CHVRCHES material. What would you say is the most surprising response that you’ve gotten?
When we did the signings and in-stores around the album release, it was interesting to meet people who either didn’t know about CHVRCHES and had found my music separately or did know about CHVRCHES and didn’t necessarily connect with it but were connecting with the solo material. I think my main prediction was that it would either be CHVRCHES fans that would come into the next part of the journey, which a lot of them have, or CHVRCHES fans would fucking hate it. So, I was like, “Oh, it’s interesting. There’s a whole subsection of people I hadn’t even considered. I didn’t even know.” It just shows that different things connect with other people. I was just grateful that people wanted to give it the time of day, honestly.
Surely there’s a middle ground in there?
I hope the two things can exist in a symbiotic universe together, but it was more about me personally, giving myself more creative agency or something. I think the best part about being in a band is its community and collaboration. But 13 years is a long time to create in only one way. Even though we work as a part of a collective, we are still individuals with creative brains, desires, and urges outside of that. I was like, yeah, I should allow myself to figure out what I look like as a creative person, but also outside of that. And just kind of future-proof my creativity. I hope that doesn’t sound too pretentious. I was like, “What if I wake up 25 years into a band and I haven’t allowed myself or pushed myself to follow any of those other ideas or thoughts?” If you’re lucky enough to be creative, I think it makes sense to want to prove that in the future.
I noticed on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! performance of “Something in the Air” that it was drums and guitar, and the guitar player didn’t even play at the beginning. Keys or synths were triggered or played from offstage, as far as what was shown on TV. Is that what the band will look like for the headlining US dates?
We run the live shows through Ableton Live. So there’ll be some stuff that stems from the record that are on track. And sometimes, when we play live, we have a keyboard player or somebody triggering some of those things. So yeah, for the live show, I think it will be the three-piece. It’ll be myself, Marian Li-Pino on drums and Heather Nation doing guitar or bass, depending on what song it is. And sometimes each of them might dip in on keyboards, and I’ll play piano and keys on some things. I’m sure every artist in the universe would love a seven-piece band on stage at all times and not have to do anything through the computer. But yes, every time I get lofty ideas, I have a good manager who’s like, “This is what that budget looks like.” And I’m like, “Oh, right.” And in a post-COVID universe, everything’s just really expensive. I’m sure loads of artists have talked about that. If touring used to be where you would make money because you didn’t make any money from records, that’s just gotten even harder post-COVID. So sometimes that keyboard’s got to go on the track.
What’s the setlist going to be like? Because the record is about 45 minutes or so, and that’s a relatively short headlining set. Will you fill that out with some CHVRCHES, some covers, maybe some unreleased solo material?
I think we’re going to play the record top to bottom, and there’s a cover that’s prepared for it, as well as some interludes and other kinds of musical treats. But I make myself feel better about it because CHVRCHES did two years of touring on 11 songs. So, I’m like, “Wait, because when you have only one record, that’s all you can play.” So yeah, whenever I think about it, like when I was thinking about it last year when I did my first kind of introductory touring for my solo project, I was like, “I wonder what we were playing?” We must’ve been playing more than that. And I looked it up and was like, “No, we were not.” We would do the first record, and then I think we would do a Prince or Whitney Houston cover. And that was it.
So, it’s definitive. No CHVRCHES material.
I don’t think so. It’s not in the current plans just because I don’t know. I feel like that’s not respectful to the project, and it’s not respectful to the guys in the band if I start playing the tunes without them. I think it would be a different case if the band were over. But that’s why I think it’s interesting every interview and every second interaction I have with fans is about the fear of the band being over, which is a lucky, privileged thing to have because they care about it. But I was like, if the band was over, indeed, I’d just be playing all the songs. So, I keep trying to reassure them, but I can’t. It’s not working. That’s my new tough love way of reassuring them. If the band were over, surely I would just play all of this catalogue that everybody already likes. Why would I make it difficult for myself?
As far as the songs that you will be playing, “Oh Mother,” to my ears, feels like the most personal song that you have released. And I’m including the solo stuff as well as the CHVRCHES material. What’s it going to be like being that vulnerable in front of several hundred, maybe even a thousand people at times?
I think that was the last song we wrote for the record. And it makes sense to me that that is when it happened. I thought I had everything that I needed for the album. It was an afternoon with my friend Dan McDougal, with whom I wrote the song, and we were tidying up the last things on a couple of other songs. And he just started playing this piano part. And the song was written top to bottom in about two hours, I think. It shows that it must have been in the back of our brains somewhere, waiting to come out. I played it at some of the acoustic shows around the album coming out. And it wasn’t the most comfortable performance experience I’ve ever had (laughs).
But I think that the main goal I set for myself with this project was just to feel less business-y when I’m on stage. I think CHVRCHES has been so lucky with all the things we’ve been able to do. But I do think—and I’m sure the guys would agree with me—that we got into a very professional cycle with how we were doing things in a way that I think is positive, but also maybe not that positive. I didn’t know that there was a lot of space for trying different things or being playful or being that vulnerable. I think we were very much in a two-to-two-and-a-half-year cycle of how we do things. I think it became something that we knew almost too well. And I wanted to feel more present in the performance, especially. Some of my favorite CHVRCHES lyrics are the ones that are more obviously personal. But sometimes, we write in a kind of deliberately obtuse way. I think a song like “Oh Mother” just wouldn’t ever have gotten written in the CHVRCHES studio. I think that’s what’s been nice for me is exercising different parts of my brain and my heart and writing things that still feel authentic. All the CHVRCHES stuff always feels authentic, but it’s a different kind of thing.
Is there a song on the solo album that you particularly look forward to performing live?
I think “Punch Drunk” will be quite fun because it’s just a bit bonkers. Like it’s quite a weird song. It’s very poppy, but it’s still quite odd. The chord changes and the way things move in it is quite strange. And I just think when I did my first introductory tours at the end of 2023, it was focus group-y to a point, not about changing the songs, but about seeing what I had and what I thought I needed. And I went away from that tour and thought, “I think I have all the kind of theatrical character-driven stuff done, but I want something, a couple of things that feel like they have more energy or a different kind of energy and are a bit more unhinged. And I think we need to inject more emotion and vulnerability back into it.”
How do you think it will be emotionally on the solo tour? You’ve said that when you joined CHVRCHES, you were younger, you were maybe more vulnerable in some ways, just because of your age and—I’m going to say—less experienced with the world. But now I’m also going to make another assumption that you’re more confident; you’re more in charge. How do you think that will play into being in charge of the band, being in charge of the room as a performer?
It’s been good for everybody to have a separation from the thing (CHVRCHES) that we know so well and things that we took as read in terms of how a tour needs to be run, how a rehearsal needs to be run, how a studio day needs to run, because a lot of the time those things came to not feel necessarily correct to me. But the best thing about a band is it’s a democracy and the worst thing about a band is that it’s a democracy
I think for me, the main rule I set myself for this time period was that not everything was going to be fun every minute of the day, but not everything needed to be heavy and dark. And it was not always like that in CHVRCHES. I think there are just different leadership styles. And I think, on a tour, the energy trickles from the top down and the bottom up.
Tour is like a little society that you travel around and you’re living in a little microcosm. And I think that, you know, the energy of that is delicate, and it can be easily swayed if you can lead with a little more kindness and a little more openness. Just small, simple changes just make people’s day easier and better. And when things go wrong, it’s much easier to deal with them when things aren’t as high stakes every minute of the day, if you know what I mean? Like our manager always says, “it’s PR, not ER.” It’s just tunes. And I think no one’s ever done a better job because they were getting screamed at, you know? If you give people the tools to do the job to the best of their ability, then everyone’s going to be happier.
In CHVRCHES for a lot of the time, I was the only woman on the team. We would have female tour managers every so often, but most of the time it was just me. And I think that’s just not normal. That’s not a normal thing to live in. And even just a simple act of like when we’re staffing up for tours, like get smart, interesting, thoughtful people and think about that when you’re hiring people. I think it just immediately is a different vibe. It’s less fratty, I would say.
You’ve been politically outspoken in the past. Here you are in America, home of the quite awful Donald Trump. Do you plan on addressing politics in any way on tour, talking between songs, intros, anything like that?
We’ve been talking to some organizations about trying to do some things in the venues that might be useful to some more like local, community-level type things. And yeah, what a sad and terrifying time. I read yesterday about Carrie Underwood playing the inauguration and all this shit. I guess we shouldn’t be shocked or disappointed in certain people at this point, but I was still shocked, a little shocked and disappointed in that one. But then you’re like, “well, I think the white women did a fucking terrible job in the election.” I remember her making jokes about Obamacare. There was like some awards show where she made jokes about it. But it used to be that (there would be some) kind of consequence of being that openly, flagrantly (MAGA), but apparently not. Apparently not now.
Complete list of Lauren Mayberry Vicious Creature tour dates:
