Heavenly Sounds

Because of its mid-September release date you won't see The Bones Of What You Believe on the 2013 shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize. Doubt it will be there in 2014, either. But for Chvrches, that's inconsequential. The electro pop trio from Glasgow are happy to avoid the hyperbole that comes with a record as consistently brilliant as their debut, with Iain Cook more interested in the experiences he and bandmates Martin Doherty and Lauren Mayberry are squeezing from their music.

“People keep mentioning that things are going so good and we don't even have an album out,” Cook says, on the phone from Chicago after soundcheck for a sold-out show at the Metro. “And I guess it is, but we're just trying to stay focused and not think too much about things like hype and buzz – these things that people keep saying to us. We run a day-to-day operation; we're just trying to do what we do and not get carried away with everything or not get bogged down about stuff. But the positive side is definitely worth dwelling on and we feel really honoured to be out here [in Chicago] and indeed in Australia in a couple of months, playing to people that really enjoy our music so far away from home – it's a really exciting thing for us.”

Forming a couple of years ago after falling for the voice of diminutive Mayberry, whom Doherty and Cook had called in to do some backing vocals, Chvrches took a variety of different elements – carnal synths, hip hop beats, earthy electronic textures – and let them spark off each other. Album opener The Mother We Share “first defined the band”, but the full-length was still a slow build as opposed to a specific “eureka moment”, as Cook calls it. “There were quite a few [times] in the studio where we all got really excited and started shouting and jumping around, and those things are essential because if you don't get excited about what you're doing then it's tough to expect other people to get excited about it,” he says.

While tinkering in Cook's basement studio in Glasgow, the band drip fed our ears with further singles Recover and Gun. Each new song brought with it further waves of excitement; it also showcased Mayberry as a special kind of frontwoman, her purity managing to cleanse whatever production Doherty and Cook put behind her.

“I think the vocals are probably the most significant contributing factor to [our] sound,” Cook agrees. “Obviously we've all played in other bands before and they sound nothing like Chvrches, but I think there's just something about the juxtaposition of [Lauren's] voice against what we're doing with the production and the dirty synths with that sweetness put against that harshness – that's really what [makes] the sound of the band. As well, I think she has a very natural sounding voice and her accent comes across in a really gentle but honest way which doesn't sound affected – those are things that are really important to the sound of the band.”

The balance works so well that it would have been easy for Chvrches to throw a few more singles in, pad the record out with a bit of filler and watch the blog-generated hipster dollars flow into the coffers. Instead, they challenge us and keep us intrigued, taking the 12-track everywhere from the dark and depraved to the washed out and come down. There's not a dull moment found on The Bones Of What You Believe, and it comes back to the group's commitment not to dwell on contentment.

“I think it's really important that when we put out an album it has a shape to it; a sense of purpose and momentum, and something that you can listen to from start to finish,” Cook reasons. “We grew up listening to music that way, particularly on vinyl, and we had that in mind when we were sequencing songs. We didn't just want to top-load it with the songs everyone knows and have it then taper off, we wanted to maximise the impact of the peaks and the troughs and try and show everyone the full picture of what we were doing.”

Having just been a part of Laneway Festival's first foray into America, Chvrches are thrilled to be a part of the Australian event next year. And if Cook's vibe is anything to go by, the shows will arrive fully formed for audiences Down Under; just make sure you Insta that shit so the band can continue improving their dancefloor sermons.

“We all come from indie and rock backgrounds – we're not just standing there and pushing buttons, we really want to put on a show and a performance, and it's something that we've grown into in the last year since we've been playing live and hopefully we'll continue to do so,” he explains.

“We've grown into just the three of us on stage and we've worked really hard to try and fill the stage in terms of what we're doing and the interaction with each other, but also in terms of lighting production. We've got this guy Louie who has built a set for us based around our artwork and iconography, and some of the stuff he's doing with a reasonably small set-up is pretty mind blowing, but I don't get to see it because I'm facing the other way. But I'll jump on Instagram after the show and just [look at] what people are seeing, and it's like, 'Holy shit!'. So we want to keep working on that, on the production, because there's only three of us on stage and there's no live drums so it's just trying to make things as exciting as possible.”