For a band located not very conveniently to Milwaukee, CHVRCHES made Brew City a regular stop during their rise to prominence. After a self-imposed hiatus, they’ll be back again with a Feb. 26 show at the Riverside Theater in support of upcoming album All the King’s Men.
The Scottish synth-pop group gigged here for the first time back in 2013 as debut album The Bones of What You Believe gained traction, then made regular stops as subsequent releases followed. The Riverside Theater has been their Milwaukee home away from home, with performances in 2016, 2018 and 2021.
But that post-pandemic concert was their last in the city before deciding to take a break that ended with the recording sessions for All the King’s Men, which is out Jan. 22. The Milwaukee show happens a little more than a month later, and tickets go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. this Friday, Oct. 30, online via AXS and at the Pabst/Riverside box offices.
Artist bio
Few bands remain thrilling in the public consciousness for as long as beloved electro-pop outfit CHVRCHES without taking an intentional pause. In 2023, Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty stepped back after their fourth U.K. top 10 album. Now they've returned with All the King’s Men, their favorite record they’ve made yet and possibly their most vital.
The hiatus reshaped how each of them writes. Mayberry pursued a solo career and explored her voice; Doherty reconnected with gritty British cinema and bands like Massive Attack and Radiohead; Cook swapped electronics for acoustic guitar. Recorded across intense, in-person Glasgow sessions between January 2025 and March 2026, none of them approached creation the same way, and it shows.
The result is a self-consciously British, freewheeling collection of 11 vividly emotional indie rock tracks, with Mayberry adopting characters and voices beyond her own. The bold, caustic “Roses” confronts Britain’s darker undercurrents over a haunting Glasgow girls’ choir, while the sunny, Wickerman-coded “Evil” turns fury into a modern feminist classic. “Overthinker” delivers the euphoric, pulsing synths longtime fans crave; and relatable nocturnal bop “Royal Blue” turns up soaked in booze and loneliness.
Running through it all is a compulsive exploration of British and Scottish identity — old, real, sometimes ugly. “Nothing was off the table; the atmosphere was ‘yes and...’” Cook said. In finding this record, CHVRCHES have crafted, for a second time, a hyper-specific creative language that belongs entirely to the three of them.
