Office Listening: CHVRCHES

We love the playful electronic innocence of CHVRCHES - ideal to get us through a slow afternoon, cooped up in our hot and sticky office at Skiddle Towers.

Doesn't sound like singer Lauren Mayberry has spent much time in an office down the years - she sounds generally unspoiled by the real world - as indeed does the entire band. 

What really carries their whole sound is how the vocals combine with brazen and warm synth play to cause general delirium. It's never more blatant than in two of their singles, 'The Mother We Share' and 'Lies', but the whole album basically does this.

Under The Tide uses the vocals of synth player Martin Doherty, but still manages to retain the overall vibe with some oh-so-modern vocoding, but like most of their tracks, they manage to avoid it becoming cliched despite using many standard synth-pop techniques.

Watch out for the Bonus Track remixes at the end of the album as well - we particularly like the KDA Remix of 'Gun'. It's got a right dirty kick to it!

It's no surprise that CHVRCHES have toured with the likes of Depeche Mode and Passion Pit - they've got the concept of electronic polish down to the same fine art as those guys. You can hear a bit of Chromeo, The Saturdays and Arcade Fire in them as well. They could easily have made this:

And they're good live, as we can vouch for having seen them at Ritz in Manchester recently. For only a three-piece band, they command the stage very well indeed. Mayberry's a gutsy and outspoken performer - well worth watching. You'll know exactly where to find us when they're on at Leeds Festival this year.

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