Lauren Mayberry rose to prominence in the 20-teens at the front of hard-hitting Glasgow synth-rock outfit CHVRCHES; as a solo artist, her music covers a much broader range, sonically and emotionally. Vicious Creature, released late last year, has tender moments of melancholy minimalism, and it also rocks harder than just about anything her primary band has done. The modest crowd that braved a freezing Monday night in February and turned out to Union Transfer this week was treated to a spectacular performance of this record in a rare, intimate (for Mayberry) setting.
Backed by multi-instrumentalist Heather Nation and drummer Marian Li-Pino, Mayberry made her charismatic-as-ever entrance to the pulsing new wave tones of “Crocodile Tears,” a ripping pop song about emotional manipulation: “Oh, what a man will say just to get his way / Always crying wolf, so I’m sad to say / That I don’t really wanna hear it / I don’t really wanna hear it from you, babe.” She strutted and spun at the edge of the stage, she pantomime gestured and used a rotary phone as a prop, and generally got the energy in the room high right out the gate.
Lauren Mayberry | photo by John Vettese for WXPN
Mayberry’s lyrics are artfully constructed but pull no punches; the soaring single “Something In The Air” confronts the disinformation plague ripping through society (“All that static down the megaphone / Too much noise might leave you on your own”) and the driving, explosive modern rock of “Sorry Etc” interrogates the line between fighting the patriarchy and accepting double-standards (“I killеd myself to be one of the boys, I lost my head to be one of the boys / I bit my tongue to be one of the boys, I sold my soul to be one of the boys”). Heady and heavy stuff, but not so much that this crowd wasn’t dancing one moment and raging the next (the need to keep warm was very real and certainly a factor too). Or, depending on the song, maybe they were standing and softly swaying, deep in their feelings. “Anywhere But Dancing” is one moment that achieved this — it’s a narrative song following a relationship’s full arc in three acts to its heartrending conclusion — while another was the encore of “Oh, Mother,” a similarly structured journey-song reflecting on family ties and mortality.
In CHVRCHES, Mayberry’s songwriting tackles big concepts set to big sounds; on Vicious Creature, she brings it down to the personal, and looks at how those forces affect us at the individual level — and it was something strongly felt among the individuals in the Union Transfer crowd. Monday night, her Philly fans were treated to a full-album performance of Vicious Creature, with the only non-album song being an absolutely euphoric cover of The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” Check out a gallery of photos from the show below, including a handful of opening artist Cult of Venus, a one-person synth rock artist in the vein of Poliça, Torres, and Wye Oak. Lauren Mayberry’s winter North American tour continues tonight at The Masquerade in Atlanta, and runs through early March before she hops across the pond for some gigs in the UK; full dates can be found here.