It's nice to be surprised by pop music sometimes, even in little ways, and that's just what The Bones of What You Believe has done to me.
Well, 'surprise' implies some kind of expectation, so maybe that's slightly misleading - while I knew there was a band called Chvrches, that was as far as my knowledge extended till reading popmatters' list of the year's 75 best songs, including an enticing description of "The Mother We Share" (#10) as, among other things, 'the most complete pop song of the year' going on to enthuse: 'Lauren Mayberry and her crew [have] crafted what amounts to the most inescapable hook any music fan has heard in a long, long time. If the accented synths through the verses won’t get you, the desperation of the chorus will.'
But the surprise is really that, well beyond the sugary, skatey genius of that one song, the album bats deep - nearly every one of its 12 synth-y electro-pop cuts has something interesting to say, a murderous hook or a series of twists that takes it in an unexpected, catchy direction, tunes like "We Sink", "Gun", "Lies", "Recover", "By the Throat" all dragging you along in their wake; it doesn't hurt that she has one of those singing voices that conveys personality. Something something, this is good.
Well, 'surprise' implies some kind of expectation, so maybe that's slightly misleading - while I knew there was a band called Chvrches, that was as far as my knowledge extended till reading popmatters' list of the year's 75 best songs, including an enticing description of "The Mother We Share" (#10) as, among other things, 'the most complete pop song of the year' going on to enthuse: 'Lauren Mayberry and her crew [have] crafted what amounts to the most inescapable hook any music fan has heard in a long, long time. If the accented synths through the verses won’t get you, the desperation of the chorus will.'
But the surprise is really that, well beyond the sugary, skatey genius of that one song, the album bats deep - nearly every one of its 12 synth-y electro-pop cuts has something interesting to say, a murderous hook or a series of twists that takes it in an unexpected, catchy direction, tunes like "We Sink", "Gun", "Lies", "Recover", "By the Throat" all dragging you along in their wake; it doesn't hurt that she has one of those singing voices that conveys personality. Something something, this is good.
