Fans ready for Chvrches double treat

Electric Picnic stars back for sold out shows

Scottish electro poppers Chvrches are heading to these shores next week for two sold out shows.

The group bring their critically acclaimed third album Love Is Dead to Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on February 21 and 22.

Singer Lauren Mayberry and multi-instrumentalists Martin Doherty and Iain Cooke return to Ireland after their stellar performance at the Electric Picnic last September.

The group’s recent EP – called The Hansa Session after the legendary Berlin studio it was recorded in – reinterprets some of the best songs from that album, including Graffiti and Get Out.

“The acoustic setup initially came about because we wanted to find a simpler, more adaptable way of doing radio sessions, rather than dragging a pile of synths into breakfast radio shows.

“We wanted to document these stripped-back versions, because we’d really grown to love what the songs felt like in that iteration,”

Mayberry told The Independent last week: “We’re lucky because Chvrches has always been quite tricky for people to categorise – electronic, pop, alternative, indie, mainstream – so we can totally change the instrumentation of a song and it can still live in the Chvrches universe.”

Formed in 2011, Chvrches released their first EP entited Recover in 2013, which included hits The Mother We Share and Recover.

Their debut studio album, The Bones of What You Believe, was released on 20 September 2013, while the band was ranked fifth on the Sound of 2013 list by the BBC.

Two years later, the talented trio released their second album, Every Open

Eye.

Frontwoman Mayberry, 31, is known for speaking up about sexism and harassment. Last year she said she might have chosen a different career path if she had known the level of abuse she would receive online.

“If you had told a younger me about the rape threats,” she says of her decision to become a singer, “I would have said: ‘Why the f*** would you want to do that?” she told The Telegraph.

Speaking to The Independent last week she admitted she finds herself “constantly depressed” by the lack of representation for gender, sexual orientation and race in the music industry.

“The fact that the conversation is being had on a more mainstream platform is great,” she said.

“When this band started, those conversations were much more likely just to induce an eye roll, and nothing would really be done. It was easier to dismiss people and just maintain the status quo, but now I think there is a lean towards slightly more accountability, so we’ll see where that goes.

“I don’t know if anything will change definitively during the lifespan of my career, but I think it’s important that people realise it’s a top-down, bottom-up issue.”

She added: “Big festival promoters can say there aren’t enough female acts or profile for them to book, because those artists aren’t getting a look-in at a grass-roots level; aren’t offered the same platforms as some male artists; aren’t promoted in the same way.

“It’s easy to tell people ‘this is what sells’ if that’s all you’re ever trying to sell them.”