CHRVCHES Leaves Little Trace Of A Long Remembered Single

This is the 2010s right? Then why does CHRVCHES new "Leave a Trace" land straight in the 1980s wheelhouse courtesy of keyboard fills and a haunting ice cold air? Lead singer Lauren Mayberry has an agreeable girlish quality to her pipes. It makes the lyrics she utters that much more enticing. She goes for depth over substance and the results are quite quaint. That's about as far as I can extend the praise. Too true such keyboard ruminations wouldn't be out of place on an '80s iPod shuffle including The Cure and Depeche Mode. Both those bands have a mope British flavor to them. CHRVCHES hails from that home turf for haggis, Scotland. Iain Cook lays on synthesizers really thick. Been there, heard that. For added effect Martin Doherty blends in a new layer of synths to give it that baked in taste '80s connoisseurs know well and take to their heart. There's only so much you can do with wave upon wave of synths. CHRVCHES single isn't hard to follow. That's kind of a curse. You can clearly hear Lauren's voice as she waxes philosophic on giving up on time, etc...references to the grand design and so forth. Does the whimsical beat do a disservice to the song's message? If there's one positive takeaway I'd say it makes the medicine easier to swallow. You can deal with weightier content a little piece at a time. Lauren's determined to find relief anywhere she can get it, if her words are telling the story accurately. The most striking part of the lyrics happen to be "Take care to bury all that you can. Take care to leave a trace of a man." Powerful but, again, when you only have a synth beat coming to represent in the musicianship department you can quote as many memorable lyric tomes as you want but the results don't buoy the music to greater heights. If you need a sense of how winningly defiant Lauren is, the video tells the entire story. Not the entire package doesn't hold up in the GQ area. Lauren isn't about emoting to within an inch of a song's life. Being understated helps "Leave a Trace" in terms of it not being a royal turnoff. Note how for lack of any other viable lightning rod I keep coming back to Lauren. Plain and simple she's the only magnetic trait that lingers after "Leave a Trace" finishes. No drums to pep up the mood. Although Iain does gift us with a bass. So how does "Leave a Trace" rank if you were to compare it to a snack treat? How does rice cake grab you? You don't get much taste bang for your listening buck. I'm not asking for everything to be a cosmic face melt but, like stones skipping across a lake, the ripples take form and then disappear into the ozone. "Leave a Trace" doesn't leave much trace at all. That's not a healthy sign.