While CHVRCHES isn’t breaking up with frontwoman Lauren Mayberry going solo, the group will be pretty quiet for a bit.

“Four albums in a row is pretty solid, so it’s important to get new stuff into our brains,” Mayberry tells NME. “Then, as and when we come back for the fifth album, it has to be moving the conversation forward — it can’t just be a different version of the same thing.”

“After 10 years and four albums, this is a good time to take a minute,” she adds. “Everyone go on your own adventure so when we come back we’re not just having the same musical conversations over and over.”

Mayberry launched her solo career with the single “Are You Awake?” in September and has spent the last month on her first solo tour. Speaking about her desire to strike out on her own, Mayberry shares, “There would be lyrics or concepts that I had come up with over the last couple of years and then thought that I couldn’t do in a CHVRCHES song.”

“These are things that I just need to say from my point of view,” she says. “Obviously I’m the narrator in CHVRCHES, but you’re still speaking on behalf of a group.”

Mayberry adds that her solo material relates to “specific things about the female experience that won’t apply to Iain [Cook] and Martin [Doherty],” her CHVRCHES bandmates.

“Obviously they have been very supportive of some of that making its way into CHVRCHES’ music, but sometimes I don’t want to sing about certain things or perform in a certain way when I’m on stage with men — if that doesn’t sound terrible,” Mayberry says. “They’re the nicest men, but sometimes it’s not a conversation that I’m comfortable having fully in that context.”

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