Album Of The Week: Chvrches The Bones Of What You Believe

Long ago, a group of gnarled Midwestern studio-rat veterans hit upon a winning formula: Find a charismatic Scottish lady and stay the hell out of her way. They called this endeavor Garbage, and they went on to become one of the great alt-pop singles bands of the '90s. The dudes in the band -- one of whom was honest-to-god famous, at least among the subset of the population who read music magazines and liner notes -- dressed in all black, maintained neutral facial expressions, and did everything possible to direct all attention toward Shirley Manson, the firecracker at the front of the stage. And now there's a new band doing roughly the same thing. Lauren Mayberry, Chvrches' own charismatic Scottish lady, isn't the force of nature that Manson was. She's no less appealing, but she's more of an open-hearted and relatable type, not a world-crusher. And in Chvrches' case, the two black-clad dudes in the band are just as Scottish as the lady in front of them. Still, the trio doesn't seem any more organic than Garbage did, and those dudes have spent nearly as much time in the unsexy guitar-rock trenches as the Garbage men had. There's a whiff of careerism here: Chvrches is clearly these guys' shot at becoming marginally famous by attaching themselves to an undeniable star. But Garbage was a cynical project, too, and that doesn't mean "Stupid Girl" wasn't an amazing song. It might not be fair to speculate on the Chvrches dudes' motives, but let's just say, for the sake of argument, that they're looking at Mayberry as a human lottery ticket. Even if that's the case, they're still making really, really great songs in the process. That's what matters here.