Chrvches’ 2013 debut, The Bones of What We Believe, was a magnificent triumph in skirting boundary between indie and pop – it was palatable enough for the uninitiated to listen unperturbed, but layered enough for the most jaded of audiophiles to listen as a sort of guilty pleasure. And those hooks, by god, those hooks sent the album over the edge. With sharp barbs steeped in emotional defiance and vulnerability placed on top of intoxicating sans-guitar synth riffs, it was a throwback to the shoulder pad pop of the 80s and championing the new-age feminism of the modern era.
Tracks like “The Mother We Share” had become ubiquitous in all of media; the band received a menagerie of awards (2014 NME “Best New Band” included) and the hype train eventually led to a feature on a Hunger Games soundtrack. Despite having reached what most would consider being the precipice of mainstream success, Lauren Mayberry and her CHVRCHES cohorts (Iain Cook and Martin Doherty) continued to masterfully toe the line of synth pop.
Critical admiration and mainstream proximity notwithstanding, CHVRCHES’ ascension into the limelight was not without some conflict. In the latter part of 2013, Mayberry (a former journalist) penned an op-ed in the UK’s The Guardian addressing the perverse misogyny that “being a band born on the Internet” had garnered them during their rise. Mayberry’s op-ed went viral, virtually solidifying her as a torchbearer of gender equality and social justice.
Following their yearlong victory lap of headlining festival slots and blogosphere adulation, the Glasgow trio announced in December of 2014 that “work on album two starts in January (2015).” Fast forward a year and a half, and CHVRCHES announces they’ve completed the album, priming the release of Every Open Eye for September 25, 2015.
If there was ever any fear that CHVRCHES would elect to spurn the synth-pop anthems that made The Bones of What We Believesuch a massive success, they’ve been quelled in Every Open Eye. The sophomore effort plays like an extension of Bones, but not much more.
“Never Ending Circles” opens Every Open Eye with the same lyrical edge and expansive soundscape as any track on Bones – Cook and Doherty weave their razor layered synth compositions to accentuate Mayberry’s empowering hook “here’s to taking what you came for/and here’s to running off the pain.”
Following the robust first track, “Leave a Trace,” offers up another Bones-esque synth pop anthem. Arguably the album’s tent pole track, Mayberry’s hook of “take care to bury all that you can/take care to leave a trace of a man,” further asserting the lead singer’s role in empowering the individual.
The rest of the album begins to drop off in rather startling fashion, with each track maintaining the CHVRCHES sound of starry synth layering and clever lyricism with glints of irascibility, but as far as preserving the anthemic resonance of the album’s open, tracks like “Keep You On My Side,” and “Clearest Blue,” begin to sound more like Chrvches B-sides, begging the question of whether or not the trio’s limited respite between albums one and two had begun to burden band’s process.
Even with the formulaic familiarity of the middle of the album, Every Open Eye still manages to maintain the listener’s attention with tracks like “High Enough To Carry You Over,” in which Mayberry’s manic pixie dream girl fervor is traded for one of the two male member’s run-of-the-mill indie pop timbre. An admirable attempt in exhibiting some versatility, but the endeavor ultimately leaves the listener ready for Mayberry’s return. Maybe that was the intention, and if so, bravo.
The end of album simply comes and goes before it can even be acknowledged. “Afterglow” is the closing track and presents an intriguing departure from the rest of Every Open Eye. Simple in composition, but cinematic in scope, it presents a more intimate (albeit trope heavy) side to Mayberry’s lyrical prose – “With all of the light and shape/we take up our own space/I’ll find my own way back/back to the past tense.”
All in all, Every Open Eye leaves much to be desired in maintaining and elevating the complexities that were presented in The Bones of What We Believe. Yes, the infectious hooks and shoulder pad riffs are there in tracks like “Leave a Trace” and “Never Ending Circles,” however they're starkly lacking the same sense of urgency of CHVRCHES tracks past. While Every Open Eye is nothing less of an above average sophomoric effort, one could probably concede that CHVRCHES' enlivened zeal seems to have fallen off ever so slightly, as if the band were only biding their time.