Chvrches, as a concept record about power and the Internet. Amid the surging din of synthesizers and ping-ponging vocal samples on "Lungs," singer Lauren Mayberry intones in a high, clear melody: "Keep yourself a secret / You should know that / I will sell you a future you don't want / Like I did last time. / I won't go slow." There are other moments, scattered across the album's 12 tracks — from the dense atmospheric swoop of "Lies" to the clattering urgency of "The Mother We Share" — that also seem to hint at technological menace. As Mayberry tells the Scene by phone from the road, it isn't by design. "I don't really think we sat and wrote a concept record," Mayberry says. "We were just kind of writing about what we were experiencing at that time."

ncé