Chvrches announced the release of their fourth studio album Screen Violence on Wednesday (June 2) while releasing its second single “How Not to Drown,” with Robert Smith of The Cure.
The Scottish synth-pop outfit announced Screen Violence will be released Aug. 27 via Glassnote Records, and they’ll support their next project on the road with a 2021 North American tour. Donna Missal will be the special guest. Chvrches is also set to perform at the two-day virtual music festival Splendour in the Grass in July.
Chvrches and Smith talked to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about how Screen Violence was actually a band name Chvrches didn’t end up going with and but eventually recycled for this project because of how it captures the prevalent digital communication used during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They also unveiled how the indie pop band came together with The Cure frontman for the emotive collaboration, which Martin Doherty said was an emotional full-circle moment for him. “I wouldn’t be in a band if it wasn’t for Disintegration and Pornography,” he said while naming The Cure’s most influential albums of the ’80s goth-rock era. “So when Robert got back to us and said that he was interested in collaborating, …. We never truly thought that it would come to fruition. After it had gone quiet for a little while, we get this demo of the blue on Halloween, no less. From Robert. With him singing.And it was everything that we hoped it would be and more.”
Doherty continued, “It was like a more intense version of the electricity that I heard the first time I heard Lauren [Mayberry] singing on one of our beats. It was like I’d gone right back to the first day of being in a band again. And it was that feeling bottled up and intensified…. I can’t overstate how much of an influence The Cure are on my music, on me as a producer and me as a writer. And so that one moment, it was emotional, and it was really intense.”
Screen Violence will be the follow-up project to 2018’s Love Is Dead, which topped Billboard’s Top Rock Albums and Alternative Albums charts. “How Not to Drown” is the second single from the upcoming album, following the release of “He Said She Said” in April.
Listen to “How Not to Drown” below, and pre-order Screen Violence here.
