“Killer” by Chvrches, Monday, September 26, 2022
Iain Cook and Martin Doherty left the band because they wanted to make a different kind of music and Aerogramme wasn't successful. Joining with vocalist Lauren Mayberry, the band's lineup was set. The band decided on the name Churches, not because the band was religious, but because the connotation of the band's name allowed listeners to make the band's music about what came to their own minds. The band decided to spell their name with a v instead of a u to help listeners search for the band more easily.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. Chvrches' fourth studio record, Screen Violence was released last year. The Glasgow-based band's latest record was lyrically inspired by lead singer Lauren Mayberry carving out a space for women in music and online in a digital world that is weeded with violent pornography and hatred towards women. Mayberry said that the cover of the record also alluded to the voyeuristic nature of the day, particularly with the world moving more and more to join the virtual world. To illustrate the horror of this reality, the band was inspired by horror films, incorporating the imagery from those films into their lyrics. But unlike a band like Ice Nine Kills, whose entire discography is based on horror films, Chvrches' lyrics are accessible to those who don't want to slog through the band's influences to enjoy their music or get their concept. Mayberry said in an interview, they toned back the horror references for fans who didn't particularly care for horror. As for musical influences, the band procured a feature from goth-rock legend, Robert Smith of The Cure, singing on the band's single "How Not to Drown."
ARE YOU ENTERTAINED? After releasing Screen Violence, Chvrches announced a deluxe edition titled Screen Violence: The Director's Cut, continuing the band's theme of a horror film. The three additional songs The Director's Cut adds to the album lengthen an already near-perfect record and the band's release of the deluxe edition coincided with Halloween. "Killer" is the first of those three bonus tracks. The lyrics examine how a person loses her mental stability and ultimately becomes something she never thought she could become. The dark synth-pop track has a melody that is reminiscent of Anberlin's "I'd Like to Die," though I think that the similarity is coincidental. "Killer" is one of the more explicitly horror-film-inspired tracks on Screen Violence, and somehow it evokes the images of an old episode of Unsolved Mysteries. So as spooky season is upon us and as the days grow shorter, while it may not be true at all, unsolved murders always seem to scare me a little bit more in the fall. Maybe it's the dying leaves, maybe it's because fall was hunting season in central New York and there were strange men wandering around our woods, maybe it was because somehow I watched more scary programs in the fall because of the proximity to Halloween. Either way, "Killer" will probably find its way on 2022's horror playlist when I make one next month.
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