Scratch beneath the surface just a little and Chvrches' electro-pop becomes something of real substance. The Glasgow trio's songs, which recall that genre's golden era in the 1980s reimagined through meticulously modern production, initially appear throwaway in the truest sense but later reveal themselves as multi-layered pop at its most colorful. Lauren Mayberry's vocals, complementing the synthesized sounds of Martin Doherty and Iain Cook, are honeyed and innocently delivered yet belie the dark and uncompromising nature of the words she sings: 21st-century chart music seldom deals in such cloaked miserablism as "I'm in misery where you can seem as old as your omens" or is as ambiguously menacing as "I'll be a thorn in your side till you die."
Chvrches' first album, "The Bones of What You Believe," was released in September just 16 months after debut single "Lies." However, even this quick ascension from "studio project born on the Internet" to top 20 band on both sides the Atlantic handpicked to support Depeche Mode is not as hastily rapid as it seems. Doherty, speaking from his Glasgow home the day before joining his band mates in Singapore, is keen to stress as much.
"It doesn't feel fast for us. We have done everything at the exact pace we'd hoped to do, took our time to write songs and made sure we were ready before anybody heard us.