Glasgow synth-pop greats CHVRCHES have shared a special remix of their latest single How Not To Drown featuring one of the band’s musical heroes, The Cure frontman Robert Smith. With CHVRCHES’ Martin Doherty proclaiming publicly that the track marked “the proudest moment of my life in music”, the darkly atmospheric pairing of The Cure’s hallmark alternative sounds with Lauren Mayberry’s signature, ethereal vocals is a winning one.
The latest track was released alongside the announcement of CHVRCHES’ forthcoming fourth studio album, Screen Violence, due to drop on August 27 via Glassnote (US) and EMI Records (UK). How Not To Drown was premiered via Zane Lowe, who interviewed the band for their first ever interview with Smith ahead of the release of the official video. Featuring claustrophobic, film-noir imagery, the clip is a continuation of the aesthetic presented with the album’s debut single He Said She Said.
“To me, success is writing a song on your laptop when you’re so depressed you can’t get out of bed, and one day Robert Smith says he likes the song enough to sing on it. Success is not a platinum song to me. Success is that when one of your heroes co-signs your band in that way… And what happens outside of that, you know, you have literally no control over it.” -Martin Doherty
Recorded almost entirely remotely between Los Angeles and Glasgow, members Lauren Mayberry, Martin Doherty and Iain Cook self-produced and mixed album Screen Violence over a succession of video calls and audio sharing programs. The result is a body of work that is uniquely CHVRCHES -in fact the making of the record marked a decade together for the band. During this time the group have defined and refined their sound, from 2013 breakthrough The Bones of What You Believe and 2015’s Every Open Eye, to their most recent 2018’s Love is Dead.
The new release narrates the theme of screen violence in three main forms – on screen, by screens and through screens – with the album touching on feelings of loneliness, disillusionment, fear, heartbreak and regret.
Screen Violence is out on 27 August via Glassnote (US) and EMI Records (UK) and is available to pre-order HERE
