If you love driving fast with the windows rolled down playing top 40 radio at full volume and you play in a band, you usually have one goal: get your songs out of your garage and into the worlds’ collective car speakers as soon as humanly possible. Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook, and Martin Doherty certainly fit this bill. They unabashedly adore music of the wind-in-your-hair variety. And, of course, they play in a band, the Scottish synth pop group, CHVRCHES.  And yet … Since emerging in 2013 with the glistening brightness of their breakthrough single, “Recover,” CHVRCHES have always projected an insularity, a subtle but unmistakable wariness about leaning into their obvious Hit Song of the Summer-writing potential. At their core, CHVRCHES are true blue Glaswegian punks. They’ve wanted to protect themselves, and protect that undercurrent of melancholy that gives depth to their sunniness. To this end, the band members have always kept their creative process close and tight. They’ve been diligent to the max about managing the way their band is portrayed. And, of course, they have historically produced every piece of music themselves, including their 2013 debut, The Bones of What You Believe, and 2015 follow-up, Every Open Eye. “Certainly not,” was their go-to response, Martin recalls laughing, when asked to consider collaboration. “We knew that if you get led down the wrong path it can completely derail your career.” But if there’s a theme in CHVRCHES’ world as they prepare to release their third record, Love Is Dead, it’s willful, determined openness, both ideologically - more on that in a minute – and in terms of actual creative process.

It’s been four years since Cherry Glazerr released her resplendent third album Stuffed and Ready, but Clementine Creevy has been in no rush. “I’ve spent these years taking a hard look at myself, at my relationships, and writing about it,” she says. “I guess I’m coming to terms with a lot of my bullshit.” Cherry Glazerr has been on the road more often than not since Creevy was still in high school, and when the pandemic hit, she immersed herself in a static existence she’d been deprived of. “When you’re always leaving, you don’t have a great sense of where your relationships stand, romantic or otherwise. You’re not thinking about the work that goes into maintaining them,” she says.    Creevy describes Cherry Glazerr’s ambitious new album, I Don’t Want You Anymore, as some of her most personal, raw music to date, a collection of songs that elaborate on this period of self-reckoning. It’s the first she’s produced since Cherry Glazerr’s garage rock debut, Haxel Princess, released nearly a decade ago when Creevy was a teenager. That album made Cherry Glazerr a Los Angeles mainstay act, and its follow up, 2017’s Apocalipstick, put her on the national map. Cherry Glazerr’s rough and tumble sound coupled with Creevy’s witty, sarcastic, occasionally self-deprecating lyricism made her a joy to watch live, her energy unmatched by the coolly detached bent of indie rock at the time.    Creevy describes I Don’t Want You Anymore as a “mature” album, moreso in reference to her personal growth than a reflection of the record, which in true Cherry Glazerr fashion is best described as Extremely Fun. To make it, Creevy linked up with producer Yves Rothman, who’s best known for his work with Yves Tumor. “I knew I had to work with him,” she says. The collaboration began with a cover of Metallica’s “My Friend of Misery” and grew into this new record, which Creevy considers to be Cherry Glazerr, fully-actualized. “The songs on this one are songs I’ve dreamed of making,” she says.    Lead single “Soft Like a Flower” exemplifies that growth. A murky guitar riff inaugurates the track, before Creevy’s unguarded vocals enter the mix. She sings of a consuming obsession and is joined on the chorus by longtime bandmate Sami Perez. “I’m high on your something,” they wail. “I like you killing me/ I like you killing me/ I like you killing me.” It’s proudly emotive, what Creevy calls an “Evanescence moment.” “It’s a real ‘losing your fucking shit’ kind’ve vibe,” she says. “I wanted this album to be just heart and soul. Completely exposed.”    I Don’t Want You Anymore uses the element of surprise to its advantage; each track is a radical reimagination of what Cherry Glazerr is and can be. “Bad Habit” opens with a spiraling vocal loop that Creevy began recording at home and it expands into a delirious downtempo dance track without ever invoking a guitar. “I can’t wait to play that one live. Whenever I’m free of a guitar and I can just sing… I love having those moments on tour,” she says. The subsequent track, “Ready for You” is sung in funky staccato and the initially spare bassline on the opening verse is eventually overtaken by a massive, staticky guitar riff that reminds you this is, at its heart, a rock album. “At the start of the pandemic, I was writing a lot in the box, what I call ‘computer music’ since I’m technologically challenged,” Creevy says. “It was fun to experiment, but after a while, I just really missed rock. I love rock music – I love how it’s cathartic and brash and sometimes a little dumb.”   Though Cherry Glazerr’s latest offers some insight into Creevy’s private moments, it’s also a humorous album, one she hopes people don’t take too seriously. “This was a really therapeutic record to make, but it’s also self-aware, and I hope, funny,” she says. On “Touched You With My Chaos,” the album’s outright loudest song that begs for a scream-along, Creevy becomes a wildly dramatic narrator, one who slashes the tires of her own car, accompanied by strings and the unexpected squawk of a trumpet. She wrote it after watching Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, and wanted to mimic the sense of desperation the film inspires. “I said that I loved you!” she howls over and over again on the chorus.    Movies have always played a role in Creevy’s songwriting, and many of the songs on I Don’t Want You Anymore can be described visually. When she wrote “Sugar,” Creevy pictured playing it in a dark, seedy club, her deadpan vocal delivery mirroring the grim atmosphere. “That song tickles the part of my brain that loves driving really late at night,” she says. These are songs to soundtrack the listener’s life, a score to suit any occasion. The titular track makes a promise to an unnamed other, but the repeating lyrics on the bridge could just as easily serve as a love letter to listeners: “In the end, you’re always holding me.”