Lauren Mayberry Announces Debut Solo Album ‘Vicious Creature’
Lauren Mayberry, the frontwoman for acclaimed electro-pop band CHVRCHES, has announced the release of her eagerly awaited debut solo album, Vicious Creature, coming this December 6th on Island Records. Pre-order is available HERE.
Vicious Creature is both a startling new era in Mayberry’s artistry, and the culmination of two decades of life in a band that came before. Across its songs, she writes about sexuality and empowerment from a profoundly personal perspective for the very first time, reconnecting with the icons of her youth (Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey and Kathleen Hanna) as well as ‘90s British girl groups such as All Saints and Sugababes, whose music made a formative impact on her in the 2000s.
For her first full-length release outside of CHVRCHES, Mayberry sought freedom: from rules, expectations and preconceptions. Working with prolific producers like Greg Kurstin, Matthew Korma, Tobias Jesso Jr., Ethan Gruska and Dan McDougall, she accessed not only a new world of inspiration but the deep well of creativity she’s had within her all along.
“So much of this process has been an exercise in empowering myself to listen to my own intuition – something I really trained myself out of,” Mayberry says. “That’s ultimately why you start making things – because you felt a feeling, and you wanted to articulate that somehow. I think it was important for me to relearn that kind of independence, and recognize what I bring to any table I choose to sit at.”
Over the course of the past year, Mayberry has been sharing songs from the new record, most recently the Brit-pop infused “Something in the Air”. Previous releases include “Shame,” “Change Shapes” and “Are You Awake.”
Today, she reveals “Crocodile Tears,” a track written with Matthew Koma and Ethan Gruska. Mayberry wanted to adopt “a sort of character where I could really let go of the idea that I need to be ‘nice,’ because I think that holds so many women back in their lives. If I didn’t have to be seen as ‘nice,’ I would feel comfortable telling certain people to fuck off when they treat me like shit – on this record, and in these songs, I gett to do that.”
Along with the album announcement, Lauren Mayberry has announced a North American tour for early 2025. Beginning January 28th at San Diego’s House of Blues, the tour will take her cross country and back, playing dates in Chicago at Thalia Hall (2/5), NYC at Webster Hall (2/13), Austin at Emo’s (2/26) and back to the west coast, ending in Los Angeles at The Belasco (3/2). See all tour dates below.
Mayberry has been in bands since she was 15, and has enjoyed monumental success with CHVRCHES, which has accrued more than 1.7 billion global streams to date and a string of awards and nominations.
In 2023, with the approach of the 10th anniversary of CHVRCHES‘ groundbreaking debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, Mayberry, felt reflective in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Looking back at all of the incredible moments of personal evolution and musical growth during her years with the band, she realized that she had hit a creative wall that she wanted to move through. Much like the artists who only lived in her headphones as a teenager, there was a part of her own artistry she had locked away. She says, “There’s things I’ve never been comfortable performing or sharing with a band of men. As much as my time with the band has always had this feminist narrative underpinning it, a lot of my role felt like it was more about me trying to fit in than leading the conversation, and I wondered what it would look like for me to create under different circumstances.”
When starting work on Vicious Creature, her goal was to push herself harder than ever before to excavate a new level of musical truth from the depths of her creative soul, and to create a record that accessed joy and theatricality in a way she hadn’t been able to in her previous projects.
Beyond her favorite artists, musicals such as Cabaret and Chicago were also an inspiration – works that dig into the dark, physical and subversive sides of femininity. “Especially when it came to the visuals for the album, I knew I wanted them to be a part of the storytelling in a way I haven’t been able to do previously,” she says. “I wanted to have an ownership over my physical self and how I was involved in the visual part of the storytelling, so I felt like I was in the driving seat of the aesthetic rather than fitting into a landscape that wasn’t really for me.”
2025 North American Tour Dates Here
1/28/25 – House of Blues – San Diego, CA
1/29/25 – Fillmore – San Francisco, CA
1/31/25 – Soundwell – Salt Lake City, UT
2/1/25 – Gothic – Denver, CO
2/2/25 – Granada Theater – Lawrence, KS
2/3/25 – Fine Line – Minneapolis, MN
2/5/25 – Thalia Hall – Chicago, IL
2/7/25 – Concert Hall – Toronto, ON
2/8/25 – Electric City – Buffalo, NY
2/9/25 – Newport Music Hall – Columbus, OH
2/11/25 – Royale – Boston, MA
2/13/25 – Webster Hall – New York, NY
2/14/25 – Empire Live – Albany, NY
2/17/25 – Union Transfer – Philadelphia, PA
2/18/25 – 9:30 Club – Washington, DC
2/20/25 – Masquerade – Hell – Atlanta, GA
2/21/25 – The Underground – Charlotte, NC
2/22/25 – The Mil at Cannery Hall – Nashville, TN
2/24/25 – White Oak Downstairs – Houston, TX
2/25/25 – Granada – Dallas, TX
2/26/25 – Emo’s – Austin, TX
2/28/25 – Crescent Ballroom – Phoenix, AZ
3/2/25 – The Belasco – Los Angeles, CA
