To experience 2020 was to experience something of screen violence. It was to struggle to make the people you loved feel more real than the characters on TV shows, and to experience a world of trauma and tumult as if it was another TV show, too. 2021, however, marks a decade together for Iain Cook, Martin Doherty, and Lauren Mayberry - a decade whose sound they have helped to create and define. They have experienced the kind of runaway success that can tempt artists into endlessly replicating past hits. 

In their new album ‘Screen Violence’, their focus on honesty and exploration seems less like a stylistic choice than a means of creative survival. ‘Screen Violence’ feels, as titles go, not unlike the music it contains: it makes you think simultaneously of the future and the past. It describes both the days of the Video Nasty and the power the screens all around us wield today - especially if we make a living through them.

It feels strangely intuitive that much of ‘Screen Violence’ came together when the bandmates were apart. “Basically everything apart from final vocals and mixing was done totally separately,” says Mayberry. It was a time, she recalls, when “everybody was going down the rabbit hole of ‘What things have I done in my life that I regret?’ Once you've done that...everybody's shown each other their dirty laundry. And then it's safer for it to be more open and vulnerable.” Or, as Iain Cook puts it: “If something's got no rough edges, I don't think it's particularly appealing.”