CHVRCHES

Few bands remain thrilling in the public consciousness for as long as beloved electro-pop outfit CHVRCHES without taking an intentional pause. In 2023, Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty stepped back after their fourth UK Top 10 album. Now they’ve returned with All The King’s Men, their favourite record they’ve made yet, and possibly their most vital. 

The hiatus reshaped how each of them writes. Mayberry pursued a solo career and explored her voice; Doherty reconnected with gritty British cinema and bands like Massive Attack and Radiohead; Cook swapped electronics for acoustic guitar. Recorded across intense, in-person Glasgow sessions between January 2025 and March 2026, none of them approached creation the same way, and it shows. 

The result is a self-consciously British, freewheeling collection of 11 tracks of vividly emotional indie rock, with Mayberry adopting characters and voices beyond her own. The bold, caustic “Roses” confronts Britain’s darker undercurrents over a haunting Glasgow girls’ choir, while the sunny, Wickerman-coded “Evil” turns fury into a modern feminist classic. Elsewhere “Overthinker” delivers the euphoric, pulsing synths longtime fans crave, and relatable nocturnal bop “Royal Blue” turns up soaked in booze and loneliness.  

Running through it all is a compulsive exploration of British and Scottish identity – old, real, sometimes ugly. “Nothing was off the table; the atmosphere was ‘yes and…’” says Cook of the making of the eclectic All The King’s Men. In finding this record, CHVRCHES have crafted, for a second time, a hyper-specific creative language that belongs entirely to the three of them. Once again it demands our total attention.