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Chvrches Announce North American Tour

Chvrches have announced a North American tour. Following spring and summer festival dates, the trio will play West Coast shows in September. They’ll continue the U.S. run in October. Check out Chvrches’ upcoming tour schedule below.

On May 25, Chvrches release their third album, Love Is Dead (via Glassnote ). So far, they’ve shared four tracks from the record: “ Get Out ,” “My Enemy” (featuring the National ’s Matt Berninger ), “ Never Say Die ,” and “ Miracle .”

Read the interview “ Chvrches on the Frustrations That Inspired Their Outspoken New Album ” on the Pitch.

05-26 Swansea, Wales - Radio1 Biggest Weekend 05-31 Barcelona, Spain - Primavera 06-03 New York, NY - Governors Ball Music Festival 06-08 Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands - Best Kept Secret 06-10 Manchester, England - Parklife 06-17 Camden, NJ - BB&T Pavilion 06-22 Scheessel, Germany - Hurricane Festival 06-22-24 Nehausen Ob Eck, Germany - Southside Festival 06-29 Panensky Tynec, Czech Republic - Aerodrome 06-30 St Gallen, Switzerland - Openair St Gallen 07-06 Werchter, Belgium - Rock Werchter 07-08 Glasgow, Scotland - TRNSMT Festival 07-11 Linz, Austria - Ahoi The Full Hit of Summer 07-13 Alges, Portugal - NOS Alive 07-15 London, England - Citadel Festival 07-27 Yuzawa, Japan - Fuji Rock 08-02 Chicago, IL - Lollapalooza 08-03 St Charles, IA - Hinterland Music Festival 08-06 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre 08-09 Ogden, UT - Ogden Twilight 08-10 San Francisco, CA - Outside Music and Arts Festival 08-31 Stradbally, Ireland - Electric Picnic 09-20 San Diego, CA - Open Air Theatre 09-26 Portland, OR - Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 09-27 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom 09-29 Seattle, WA - Paramount Theatre 10-03 Saint Paul, MN - Palace Theatre 10-04 Milwaukee, WI - Riverside Theater 10-08 Birmingham, AL - Iron City 10-09 Asheville, NC - Thomas Wolfe Auditorium 10-10 Atlanta, GA - The Tabernacle 10-11 New Orleans, LA - The Joy Theater 10-15 Nashville, TN - Ryman Auditorium 10-16 Charlotte, NC - The Fillmore 10-18 Washington, DC - The Anthem 10-20 Boston, MA - Orpheum Theatre

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Chvrches Plot Summer Headlining Tour

By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

Scottish synth-pop outfit Chvrches have extended their 2019 North American tour to include a headlining run this summer.

The tour kicks off June 29th at the Westword Music Showcase in Denver, Colorado and includes stops in cities like Milwaukee, Toronto and New York City, where the band will play Radio City Music Hall with special guest Charly Bliss. The tour wraps July 14th with a performance at Forecastle Festival in Louisville, Kentucky.

Tickets for Chvrches’ summer run go on sale this Friday, April 26th. Complete information is available on the band’s website .

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Chvrches recently performed at Coachella and have a handful of concerts and festival appearances scheduled over the next few weeks.

Chvrches released their most recent album, Love Is Dead , last May. The record marked the group’s third and followed 2015’s Every Open Eye . In March, the band partnered with DJ/producer Marshmello for a new song, “Here With Me,” which has become the band’s highest charting single to date with over 100 million streams around the world.

Chvrches Tour Dates

June 29 – Denver, CO @ Westword Music Showcase July 1 – Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater July 2 – Milwaukee, WI @ Summerfest July 4 – Ottawa, ON @ Bluesfest July 5 – Quebec, QC @ Festival D’Ete July 7 – Toronto, ON @ Rebel July 9 – New Haven, CT @ College Street Music Hall July 11 – New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall (with Charly Bliss) July 13 – Minneapolis, MN @ Basilica Block Party July 14 – Louisville, KY @ Forecastle

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Love Is Dead: Chvrches are a cathartic pop beacon in confusing times

• X (formerly Twitter)

What do you do when the world is going to hell in a handbasket? If you're Chvrches, you do what you always do: write catchy-as-heck, big-ass synthpop to help shake off the sadness.

"We’re f**ked. The world is f**ked."

It's not exactly the kind of declaration you'd expect to whet fan anticipation for a new album. Least of all from a band known for blasting away the worries of the world with gleaming synth hooks and towering choruses. Yet, this is exactly what Iain Cook from Chvrches declared in a media release ahead of the band's triple j featured third album , Love Is Dead.

Even though it's definitely the darkest, most tumblr-worthy title the Glasgow trio have ever come up with, frontwoman Lauren Mayberry explains it's designed as a beginning rather than a defiant endpoint, a conversation-starter.

"It was not lost on us that it was going to be a somewhat theatrical title," Lauren tells Gen & Lewis on triple j Drive. Calling in from New York City, where Chvrches are rehearsing for a world tour that includes an Australian run around Splendour In The Grass , she says Love Is Dead is meant to be ambiguous and our responses to it should fluctuate.

"Some days I wake up and I totally agree with that sentiment, and other days I don’t. I think it’s about questioning things, figuring it out."

The title is meant to raise questions, like 'How did we get to this point? And how do we move on?'

If we are all f***ed, what comes next?

This darker headspace is especially interesting given that this new set of songs shares the same sonic DNA that made 2015's Every Open Eye and 2013 debut The Bones Of What You Believe so appealing. Love Is Dead ripples with addictive hooks and glistening top lines, but lyrically, it's the band at their gloomiest, reckoning with feelings of frustration, disappointment, resentment, time and relationships wasted - all against the depressing backdrop of global headlines consumed by mass violence and intolerance.

So, what can a synthpop band do in the face of all that? "I don’t know if we have answers a lot of the time but we’re trying to figure out how you feel, why you feel the way you feel," Lauren says. "Just expressing that frustration through writing a song and performing it can feel really cathartic even if you don’t really get to the end of what you were trying to do."

Rather than trying to get to the bottom of the world's problems, or fix them, Love Is Dead is Chvrches reminding themselves, and us, that sometimes wading our way through the frustration and fear is enough.

In other words, perseverance is its own reward, a message that's hoisted up in many of the album's choruses. "Never Say Die!" Mayberry sings defiantly on the track of the same name; "you better hold on to what you love," she commands on ' Deliverance '; "give up on giving up."

On the muscular 'Miracle', Lauren wants us know she's "not askin' for a miracle", she's just looking for a way to move forward. Just getting through the shitstorm is enough cause for celebration. "Have you reached the point of no return?" she questions on ' Heaven/Hell ', "We can raise our glasses, dancing on the ashes as it burns. Is this heaven or is this hell?"

Again and again, from the feverish ' Forever ' to the addictive ' Graves ', this is music that channels pure pop escapism, finding solace in a dizzying dance and purge while contrasting shiny pop exteriors with dark interiors. "Mixing those two elements is always really important to us," the singer tells triple j. "[That] sums up that juxtaposition we always try to make Chvrches songs have."

On paper, the refrains of 'Get Out', 'Never Say Die', 'Forever' and 'Deliverance' are plain, simplistic even, but set against infectious melodies and bold, urgent energy, their passion is contagious, sounding more like towering neon-lit manifestos than buzz phrases.

It definitely helps that Lauren sings them with a do-or-die belief, flared by the same sense of conviction that compelled the 30-year-old to try her hand at journalism and law before she found her voice out front of self-described music nerds Iain Cook and Martin Doherty.

She's not let that strong social justice streak wane. Remember her calling on US politicians to enforce gun control ? Or slamming online misogyny in an op-ed for The Guardian years before #metoo was a thing? But these causes have often existed in tandem to the music rather than being central to it. Those topics and condemnations aren't addressed explicitly on Love Is Dead but they've definitely impacted the fiery, direct tone of Lauren's songwriting.

Big themes need big sounds

In early 2017, Chvrches escaped the Glasgow basement where they self-produced their first two albums for a sunny switch-up: a trip to Los Angeles to open themselves up, for the first time, to outside influences in rounds of 'producer speed dating'.

Following initial sessions mentored by Dave Stewart of '80s synthpop icons Eurythmics ("they really wrote the book on the genre that we try and make..."), the trio wound up connecting with co-producers Steve Mac and 'Jedi Master' Greg Kurstin.

"The opening synth riff of ‘Get Out’ was the first thing to emerge on our first day in the studio with [Kurstin]," Lauren says.

The mega-producer, whose award-winning CV includes credits with Sia, Adele, Kendrick Lamar, and Foo Fighters, has helped Chvrches sound bigger and brighter than ever before. No small achievement considering those qualities have been self-evident ever since the band's breakout 2013 single ' The Mother We Share '.

Rather than dictate studio sessions, the group credits Kurstin with encouraging them to avoid agendas and rule-setting in favour of focussing on spontaneity. "We were way more concerned with things happening in the room... in order to get something that's genuine and honest."

Following their impulses allowed Chvrches to engage with some intriguing touchstones, like how Michael Jackson's percussive 'Dirty Diana' informed one track, or a surprise link-up with The National's Matt Berninger on the haunting duet, 'My Enemy'. (Hear Lauren discuss both those topics below):

Is it their best album?

If there's one major complaint with Love Is Dead , it's that it's overstuffed. The band have always been simultaneously blessed and burdened by how prolific they are. Their first two albums were accompanied by a wealth of bonus tracks, alternative versions, and remixes. The group reportedly chose from over 40 songs for the final running order of their third.

"We come from a place where we do think about the tracklisting, what narrative it follows," explains Lauren, saying they love of sequencing is a reaction to the typically fragmented way modern listeners consume music. "We still try to think about the overarching picture."

That said, at 13 songs running around 50 minutes (a lick longer than their debut) Love Is Dead feels like that picture loses focus, especially in the final stretch. By the time Martin steps into the vocal spotlight (a running album tradition), for the claustrophobic 'God's Plan', you can't help but feel the best part of the album is over, and that's before reaching the needless instrumental segue 'ii'.

Intended or not, frontloading Love Is Dead was no bad thing. From the immediacy of nostalgic opener ' Graffiti ' to the glittery stomp of ' Graves ', it's a breathless sprint of engrossing anthems that only effectively pauses for breath with the dour 'My Enemy'.

It isn't perfect but Love Is Dead is at its best when gunning for high-octane, fist-in-the-air pop melodrama, glowing with a euphoria that makes you feel like you can take on the world. Even if you don't end up solving its problems, when you sing along, it feels like - if just for the lifespan of a pop song - like you're far, far above them.

Love Is Dead is out now via Liberator Music/Goodbye Records. Chvrches will bring the album on tour through Australia in July for Splendour In The Grass and sideshows .

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Album Review: CHVRCHES "Love Is Dead"

• Last updated: 29 May 2018, 21:37:33
• Published: 25 May 2018, 17:17:44
• Written by: Gillian Searer
• Photography by: Scott Dudelson
• Categories: Reviews Tagged: CHVRCHES

CHVRCHES released their third studio album today (May 25): Love Is Dead . During production the band collaborated with David Stewart (from Eurythmics) and Matt Berninger (from The National), which makes this the first non-independently produced album for the band. Prior to the full album release, the band has released four singles off the album including "Get Out," "My Enemy," "Never Say Die," and "Miracle"; together they already have over 20 million streams on Spotify.

Love Is Dead has done everything but disappoint. This 13-track LP captures CHVRCHERS signature glistening gloom while taking us lyrically deeper than ever before. Love is Dead is a collection of songs with natural danceabiliy, but it has left us questioning if love is still worth it. Lauren Mayberry, the band’s lead singer, described her writing process as:

“I tried to write less about romantic love specifically, and more about the overarching concept of love.”

The album’s opening track, “Graffiti” captures the groups perception of growing up. Lauren sings:

“I’ve been waiting for my whole life to grow old and now we never will.”

The rest of their album continues to show a very vulnerable side of the band through their blended style of punk and pop. The band takes a stronger political stance then we usually see from them with lyrics like:

"they’re leaving bodies in stairwells and washing up on the shore” and “ you can look away while they’re dancing on our graves”

These lyrics come from the band’s song "God’s Plan" that they debuted at the iHeartRadio Theater on Tuesday (May 22).

CHVRCHES is currently on tour and will continue until early November with shows all across the world. You can check out their website for tickets and additional tour information.

You can order a hard copy or stream the album on your favorite streaming service, now!

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Album reviews: Chvrches 'Love Is Dead', Snow Patrol 'Wildness' and more

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Chvrches, Love Is Dead

Download this: Never Say Die, Graves, Graffiti, Get Out

Throughout Chvrches’ seven-year career, the Scottish synth-pop band has juxtaposed darkness and light in their music. On Love Is Dead , Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty examine these two sides – weighted by the political climate and underlying melancholy plaguing the world.

But beneath the heavier aspects of the record is an acute observation of hope and love when faced with an existential crisis. Instead of homing in directly on her own heartbreak like she has in the past, singer Lauren Mayberry narrates for a wider audience. It’s unsurprising: the band has expanded its fan base dramatically since the release of their debut LP. But Mayberry – who has been an unrelenting voice against sexism in the music industry – continues to use her perspective and platform to dismantle problematic behaviour.

The band’s latest release instead explores overarching concepts that are seemingly relatable to everyone. Love Is Dead feels more conceptual than 2013’s The Bones of What You Believe and 2015’s Every Open Eye . It’s not an overtly political album, but the undertones are undeniable. Chvrches, however, don’t purely focus their energy there: instead they use those challenges to propel them into searching for strength and human connection.

The stellar lead single, “Get Out”, a cinematic blend of synth and the craving for a great escape, and opener “Graffiti” stem from a similar space, as Mayberry wistfully muses about the crushing effect of time. “Wrote our names along the bathroom walls, graffitiing our hearts across the stalls,” Mayberry croons. “I’ve been waiting for my whole life to grow old and now we never will.”

“Never Say Die”, a standout on the album, parallels All We Know Is Falling -era Paramore, clad with its dark pop-punk ethos and disillusionment of the world. “I feel like I’m falling but I’m trying to fly, where does all the good go?” Mayberry desperately pleas on “Miracle”, returning to the larger theme of dark versus light on the record.

“Deliverance” pays homage to Depeche Mode and The Cure while questioning religion. “They’re leaving bodies in stairwells and washing up on the shore/You can look away while they’re dancing on our graves/If you don’t have a heart I can offer you mine,” Mayberry lilts on “Graves”, grazing the maddening state of humanity but also meditating on small moments of happiness.

The singer approaches the politics of sexism, as someone who has long endured it, head-on in the ethereal “Heaven/Hell”: “Is it right if I’m a perfect actress/Playing the princess in distress?/Is it alright if I save myself and/If I clean up my own mess?/Is it enough yet, ’cause I’ve had enough?”

Mayberry has, in fact, had enough – she’s expressed as much over the years long before Time’s Up or the #MeToo movement started. Since then, she’s taken things on that have forced her to grow up: something the record does in embracing the dichotomy of hope and fear.

The perspective Mayberry has found is care of growing up during a time when people she had never met were trying to tear her down. She found strength and fought back. Love Is Dead continues to ask questions of the world, but realises they’re not always black and white, or in Chvrches case, light or dark. Ilana Kaplan

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Snow Patrol, Wildness

Download this: What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get, Soon

Snow Patrol decided before crafting their first album in seven years that their next one had to be drastically different from their older releases. Their latest record Wildness is indeed different – but it doesn’t make it better.

The 10-track record channels the ethos of John Mayer’s Born and Raised : an attempt to sound authentic about personal topics such as vocalist Gary Lightbody quitting drinking and the importance of holding on to memories after watching his father lose his memory to dementia.

With the initial release of Songs for Polarbears , Snow Patrol were revered as an indie band, but their music eventually translated into commercial recognition. Wildness is an attempt to return to form, but it’s an unsuccessful one.

“Don’t Give In” ineffectively attempts to be raw with chorus lyrics: “Don’t give in/Don’t you dare quit so easy.” The band experiments with bizarre time changes on the haphazard “A Dark Switch”, which feels like a misstep. However one bright spot on a record full of inconsistencies is “What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get” as a simple ballad original Snow Patrol fans will probably enjoy. Ilana Kaplan

Dear Nora, Skulls Example

Download this: Skulls Example, Sunset on Humanity, Morning Glories, Creature of Habit

As Dear Nora’s first album in 10 years, Skulls Example continues to examine vocalist Katy Davidson’s fascination with topics like humanity, technology, late capitalism and love.

Davidson – who has been working as a commercial music producer full-time for the past three years – decided a return to the indie-pop project was imminent after Trump got elected. Despite the lack of sustainability she saw as an artist nearly two decades ago, she needed to take a stand against capitalism.

The band’s latest effort seems to pick up where Davidson’s 2011 solo record California Lite under the moniker Key Losers left off with an examination of the intersection between technology and human connection. Lyrical references to 2018 vernacular like “drop a pin” or “sponsored by PT Cruiser” take aim at how dependent our society is on technology and branding.

Lead single “Sunset on Humanity” features Davidson crooning frankly about how she sees the world from an oversaturated commercial perspective, while “Morning Glories” is a delicate, finger-plucked track about the beauty of nature. On Dear Nora’s latest LP, Davidson aptly and gorgeously narrates the need for love in a world that has been set on fire. Ilana Kaplan

Artificial Pleasure, The Bitter End

Download this: Bolt From The Blue, I’ll Make It Worth Your While

Artificial Pleasure specialise in artpop that doesn’t alienate the listener, and with their debut album, The Bitter End , they’ve created something rather special that should, hopefully, grow an already-budding cult following that has only been bolstered by the band’s splendid live shows.

Born out of four members from punk-funk band Night Engine, this project is a superb blend of electronic and classic Eighties pop influences; that also incorporates elements of punk rock in all its leather-bound energy.

The album explodes with opener “I Need Something More”, wasting no time to get into the swing of things, a pulsating guitar riff reminiscent of Kurt Cobain’s take on “The Man Who Sold The World” – harsher and more immediate than Bowie’s soft intro.

There’s no other way to describe “Bolt from the Blue” but “strut” – that’s what it does; a slow, slinky sashay around your eardrums with a lustful vocal delivery akin to Joe Strummer on “Should I Stay or Should I Go”. On “People Get Everywhere” the band sample computer-glitchy sounds but place them over a classic rock riff – it’s perfect.

The Bitter End captures a sense of hedonism and sexual expression that isn’t explored enough in current pop music; relishing in the camp of the spaghetti western-style “Turn To Dust”, or throwing shapes “On a Saturday Night”, where the freewheeling yet wry tones hark back to the mood of JJ Cale and Eric Clapton on “Cocaine”.

“Let me out – I really wanna dance” they shout on “I’ll Make It Worth Your While”, with a bass line that thrums along the lyric and pulls the listener into its hectic, dazzling party that allows for a moment’s escapism – in the claustrophobia of a big city. Roisin O’Connor

Jenny Hval, The Long Sleep

Download this: Spells, The Dreamer Is Everyone In Her Dream

Norwegian avant-gardist Jenny Hval has an insatiably curious mind. She’s concerned with addressing life’s questions more than providing answers.

On The Long Sleep EP, the follow-up to 2016’s Nordic Music Prize-winning album Blood Bitch , Hval traverses the arenas of life, death and rebirth in an ironically short burst of 23 minutes. Few artists can stretch the mind to such effect.

On Blood Bitch there were confessions of desire (“The Great Undressing”). On her fifth album, 2015’s Apocalypse, girl , feminism was writ large on “Kingsize” (“Think big, girl/Like a king”). But The Long Sleep is more concerned with the lifecycle, the existential, and, in parts, is more sonically expansive.

Hval’s enlisting of celebrated jazz musicians for the record makes for a free-flowing, sedative listen throughout. EP opener “Spells” awakens slowly with each instrument coming to: a cascading piano trickles into life, brass instruments hum, and a Nineties baggy beat bounces in. “You will not be awake for long/We’ll meet in the smallest, great unknown,” Hval sings with a mellifluous falsetto at its sky-scraping chorus. “Spells” denotes the exciting beginnings of life. In typically contrary style, however, Hval also notes its futility, deadpanning: “Exercising everything by typing into nothing.” Is there ultimately more life in death?

“The Dreamer Is Everyone In Her Dream” borrows the piano of “Spells” but turns it into a lullaby. Here, Hval likens a broken person to a disco ball, capable of emitting light despite the darkness lurking beneath. A dreamlike state is born of a 10-minute meditation on “The Long Sleep” before death – or rebirth – arrives at “I Want To Tell You Something.” Hval ponders: “There should be something I could say directly without lyrics and melody.” As with the closing line in “The Great Undressing”, she opts for “I love you”. Maybe in the madness of life and the long sleep that follows, love is all that matters. Charlotte Krol

Jonathan Davis, Black Labyrinth

Download this: What It Is, Final Days, What You Believe

Being the frontman of nu-metal trailblazers Korn for the past 25 years hasn’t worn Jonathan Davis out. With millions of worldwide record sales, countless sellout tours and Grammys to boot, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was time to, well, call time. But not for the 47-year-old California native. A relentless tour schedule with Korn threatened to keep his debut solo album, written on the road 10 years ago, in perpetual postponement. Until now.

Korn fans thirsty for a rehashing of past material be warned: Black Labyrinth is quite the about-turn. Sure, Davis’s signature growl remains intact, but instead here is a meshing of metal and world music, of crunching alt-rock, even the odd, zippy guitar and indie disco beat. Instruments from India, Japan and the Middle East feature heavily on the record – especially on “Final Days”. It’s a trippy four minutes of syncopated tabla beats, richly layered with eerie flutters of what sounds like Arabic ney flute. Elsewhere, darting sitar gracefully mimics Davis’s singing.

Davis’s knuckle-white guitars, like his growling vocals, are still prominent even if his supporting cast is altered. “Everyone” is pleasingly ferocious – all glottal screams and acrobatic power chords – as is the unnerving fuzz stomp hulk of “What You Believe”.

The image of the ever iconoclastic Davis snarling, “I don’t need anyone above to tell me what to do”, is duly burnt to memory as Indian tablas worm their way back in. Not that this always happens so effortlessly. On “Gender”, the drums are lazily shoehorned in. They sit incongruously inside a jarring middle eight on the disappointing “Basic Needs”.

Themes of anguish and otherness are littered in Davis’s frequently cliched lyrics, though some listeners will welcome such lyrical clarity. “I will embrace who I really am,” Davis wails over a chorus of grunting guitars and incendiary drums on lead single “What It Is”. We embrace him too. Charlotte Krol

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Chicago Concert Reviews

We’ve got the windy city covered., chvrches: “love is dead” tour at aragon ballroom.

Posted by Curt Baran

For additional information on Chvrches, visit Chvrch.es .

For a list of upcoming Jam Productions shows, visit JamUSA.com .

For a list of upcoming shows at the Aragon Ballroom, visit Aragon.com .

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CHVRCHES - Love Is Dead

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