Chvrches headline London's Electrowerkz

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Chances are over the past month or so you’ve chanced upon Glaswegian electro-pop threepiece Chvrches, as the blogs and their stylised logo refer to them, or the more standardised Churches if you want to believe their Facebook page.

Whatever the correct spelling, their recent blogger smash-hit ‘The Mother We Share’ fired the group into the tipster columns of various broadsheets, as well as the b-lists of mainstream radio, with its unashamedly saccharine gloss. The track seemed to tick all the right boxes, connecting the dots between bedroom-producer electronica and the kind of pop you’re likely to hear coming out of an iPhone speaker on the bus.

One track doesn’t a “one to watch” make, however, as anybody who has ever directed hyperbole towards any three minute gem found on Soundcloud late at night knows. While their recent session with Radio 1′s Huw Stephens went some way to show the sugar-coated ammo they pack in their arsenal, the band’s London headliner last night at Electrowerkz gave the group an utmost prime opportunity to fight for their place in those multitudinous year-end predictions.

Starting off a little slow and hesitant, it isn’t until singer Lauren Mayberry steps forward with the microphone for the remarkably self-assured ‘Lies’ that they show glimpses of what they could blossom to be. The rest, however, does leave a little to be desired – with some tracks of the evening sounding nothing more than Alphabeat with their foot on the gas.

As the set closes on a high with a pretty effective cover of Prince’s ‘I Would Die 4 U’ and the aforementioned ‘The Mother We Share’ (causing the entire crowd to get moving, front to back), it only goes to underline the inconsistency of such a set. With potential a-plenty, we can only hope for both ours and their sake that they patch up these little niggles come album #1 release time.

Setlist:
If We Sink
Recover
Lies
Lungs
Science/Visions
Night Sky
I Would Die 4 U (Prince cover)
The Mother We Share