All that sadness, frustration and uncertainty meant she was putting more and more pressure on the writing sessions, which often led to songs that, according to Lauren, "fucking stunk". And so, backstage at The Great Escape in May, Lauren told herself that she'd fucked her solo career before it even got going and considered sacking it all off to return home. "I'm a bit of a cunt, though, and I don't want other people to decide for me," she says today. "Even though I was disappointed and felt quite let down, I knew it would be really shit if that's how it all ended. Maybe it's the Glaswegian in me, but it was good fuel for the fire." A few days later, she went into the studio with Dan McDougall, wrote four new songs, and the album was done.

The result is 'Vicious Creature', a cathartic, liberated, euphoric album that doesn't shy away from vengeance, loss, regret or pain. "It was definitely a fucking journey, but we made it."

Lauren first started thinking about a solo project in 2018, shortly after the release of CHVRCHES' third album 'Love Is Dead'. "I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I was just very conscious that bands don't last forever," admits Lauren, that fear fuelled by the mixed reviews that 'Love Is Dead' received after near-universal praise for both 'The Bones Of What You Believe' and 'Every Open Eye'. The subtle but undeniable discontent that was growing inside the camp didn't help either. "I've been in bands since I was 15, and I've always been incredibly ride-or-die," says Lauren. It dawned on her that CHVRCHES wasn't the same as being in a band with mates from university because the stakes were so incredibly different.

She started pulling together ideas for a solo record, but during the pandemic, CHVRCHES came together virtually to create fourth album 'Screen Violence', which acted as overdue "marriage therapy" for the group. Still, after encouragement from friends that there was something in the solo tracks she'd already been toying around with, she decided to see it through. "It was liberating and intimidating in equal measure, especially at the start," she explains.

While CHVRCHES are a democracy that acts as both a sounding board and a safety net, Lauren suddenly found herself in charge of every decision. "There were definitely some songs that other people really liked for the project, but I knew couldn't happen. If you think it's shit, you have to stick to your guns and say it's shit."

"It feels weird to say this, but making this album was a coming-of-age of sorts," says Lauren, who joined CHVRCHES as a 24-year-old who had never fronted a band before. On the other hand, her bandmates had already established themselves as working musicians, so there was a pre-existing structure for how everything worked. "I spent a lot of early CHVRCHES feeling quite inadequate. It's been good for me to figure this all out for myself and learn to trust my own opinions. I haven't needed to think about how to sell an idea; I can just do it." It's here where the freedom of 'Vicious Creature' comes from.

There are threads between CHVRCHES and Lauren Mayberry's solo project, but it is a deliberately different world, with 'Vicious Creature' pulling together her love of emo, pop, theatre, and storytelling. The worst writing sessions were when someone sat down with her and tried to make half-baked versions of what CHVRCHES do. "What's the point? It's just disrespectful to the rest of the band."

Instead, Lauren set out to make a "really dark, theatrical pop record" after repeated watches of Joe Masteroff's Cabaret - a musical that follows the rise of the Nazis against the backdrop of a hedonistic nightclub - and pulling inspiration from PJ Harvey, Annie Lennox's 'Diva', and 90s-00s pop groups like All Saints and Sugababes.

But there are also "less theatrical, more confessional" songs that channel singer-songwriters like Alanis Morrissette, Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith, Sinéad O'Connor, and Tori Amos. "I didn't necessarily think that was ever going to happen, but stuff was happening in my life that came through in the writing."

The second-to-last song written for the album was 'Something In The Air', a "fun, 90s-sounding Britpop banger." The last was 'Oh Mother', which is "probably one of the saddest songs I've ever written," says Lauren. "One day, Dan and I were giggling and jumping around the studio; the next, we're both having a small cry by the piano." It was at that point she knew the record was done.

"Sometimes you listen to a record, and you can tell the artist only wrote ten songs, and they're the ones that made it. I just wanted to know that I turned over enough rocks to be choosing things for the right reasons," she offers, having written over 40 potential songs for the album.

It means that fan-favourite tracks from those early live shows, like 'Bird' and 'Under The Knife', have been cut. "I felt a bit sad about it as it was happening, but it's better for the record. You don't need too much of one thing," she says. "'Vicious Creature' is half big, slappy pop, half acoustic singer-songwriter. We're allowed acoustic guitars in the solo era, but we also keep the 808s."

Lyrically, as well, Lauren Mayberry's album covers some serious ground. "There was a lot of stuff I was clearing out of my proverbial closet initially," she says. With many of the songs written in the same window as the ten-year anniversary celebrations for CHVRCHES' debut album, she couldn't help but reflect on that time in her life and what came next.

"A lot of amazing things happened, but there was also a lot of stuff that was really quite bad," she says, having previously described the hate and abuse she received in a 2013 Guardian article titled 'I will not accept online misogyny'. It started a conversation, with Lauren asked about it in almost every interview that followed, but it also encouraged more vile, sexist comments because how dare a woman use her voice. "I was trying to brush it off and say it didn't impact me, but it definitely fucked my brain up," she admits.

There's the dreamy 'Mantra', a "witchy, almost-séance-like song" that's less about wanting to date indie boys in bands and more about wanting to take their jobs, while the twisting banger 'Punch Drunk' is a love song, with a suitably Mayberry twist. "It's not as fun if it's just a blatant love song, so I wrote about meeting somebody that's really, really nice to you, and it makes you act fucking crazy."

Then there's the glittering bite of 'Crocodile Tears', written about a phone call where Lauren was too busy trying to fix things to say what she wanted. "I wish I'd been able to say, 'Shut the fuck up and stop piling all this crap on me', but that's not who I am. Luckily, that song allows me to be a more theatrical character who can say the things I wouldn't."

"Luckily, I also wrote a lot of sad stuff about real life as well," says Lauren with a smirk. 'Sunday Best' was meant to be a cheery song, inspired by Talking Heads and Baz Luhrmann's 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)', but "stuff happened that made me feel like how I've spent a lot of my life is actually bullshit, and I've missed so much time that I'll never get back," says Lauren. So she started thinking about all the things she'd do differently, including not wasting her own time worrying about things that really don't matter. "I wanted to write a hopeful song that would act as a clean slate," says Lauren. Her manager told her how uplifting it all sounded. "Yeah, but 'Sunday Best' is about funerals, isn't it?" replied Lauren, who reunited with 'Love Is Dead' producer Greg Kurstin for the track. "Again, I thought I was going to make a big pop banger, and I ended up with an existential crisis worrying about the death of your parents."

"I liked the drama of my debut...