Featured image by Jody Evans. Courtesy of Futures ✦.
UNITED KINGDOM — CHVRCHES just dropped “Overthinker,” its second single off their eagerly-anticipated new album “All The King’s Men”, set for the January 2027 release.
The forthcoming album’s standout ballad, “Overthinker” is BBC Radio 1’s Hottest Record, making its arrival the night after a special intimate charity show for 100 lucky fans at Assumption Studios in Glasgow, the converted church where the album was recorded.
The song blends euphoria and emotional ache over driving, pulsing synths and shimmering hooks. Turning inward, “Overthinker” is described to shift the album’s focus from societal pressures to the things much closer to home.
In a song about complicated family dynamics, Mayberry describes a relationship with “someone who is your shelter and your storm” and the difficulty of that contradiction and living in the ‘winter’ of someone’s depression or discontent.
“Should I lie to you, keep my thoughts from you?”, she sings. “You ask after my friends, if I’m getting thinner, not sure how you raised such a chronic overthinker.”
Photo credit: Jody Evans. Courtesy of Futures ✦
“All The King’s Men”, the band’s first album in almost six years, is due for release on 22 January 2027 in LP, CD, cassette and digital formats via Futures ✦. This comes after the band—Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty—took their pause in 2023 after touring their fourth UK Top 10 album “Screen Violence”.
The result is “All The King’s Men”, a self-consciously British freewheeling collection of 11 tracks of vividly emotional indie rock that fans won’t expect, and neither did they.
In the intervening years, all three members were consciously and unconsciously absorbing material for their return. As they recalled, on his frequent trips back to Scotland to spend time with his mother, Doherty had reconnected with gritty British cinema by auteurs like Shane Meadows and Ken Loach – not incidentally the ones who stare down the barrel of the UK’s worst social issues – and UK artists like Massive Attack, Souxsie & The Banshees, and PJ Harvey.
Meanwhile, Mayberry had done her 10,000 hours of sessions and leveled up as a lyricist, and came looking to make music that showcases a fresh storytelling quality and vocal range, and Cook, still living in the band’s Scotland home base, had started to reject electronics in favor of writing with acoustic instruments, and was listening to Nick Drake, Bert Jansch and Incredible String Band.
With none of them approaching creation in the same way, they eschewed the remote working of “Screen Violence” to meet for multiple, intense three-week stints in Glasgow. They knew recording in-person and in Scotland was exactly the environment necessary for experimentation on this record.
Album art courtesy of Futures ✦.
All The King’s Men Track List
- Roses
- Evil
- Adore You
- Overthinker
- Royal Blue
- Comedown Tomorrow
- Friend Of A Friend
- Three Out Of Five
- Conman
- Jamie’s Prayer
- Faith In Flying
A first taste came previously with the release of “Roses” – a scathing piece of contemporary social commentary, a confrontation with the darker undercurrents of Britain, with Mayberry snarling, “raise a glass to delusions of the good days of blood and wine; of pearls for swine.”
The song’s Orwellian closing announcement, “If I may command your undivided attention, now we can start,” set the stage for what is to come with “All The King’s Men”.
With this, the upcoming record stands as a compulsive exploration of British and Scottish culture told through the unique viewpoint of the band. After years now spent in America, with all its large newness as a country, Doherty and Mayberry connected with a sense of the UK’s history as “old and real” even when it’s ugly. Whether it’s smashing through expectations with playful 90s pop-rock (“Adore You”) or injecting bleak, expansive loneliness into indie ballads (“Comedown Tomorrow”), there’s an unapologetic dynamism to its state-of-the-nation songs that demands total attention.
For Mayberry, Doherty and Cook this was about discovering their own strength, saying that it’s forever changed how they’ll work as individuals and together. In finding the album, CHVRCHES seems to have found something else too, for a second time in their career: a poignant creative language that belongs entirely to the three of them.
Watch the official music video for “Overthinker” below:
CHVRCHES also announced a full tour of the UK and Ireland preceded by an extensive run of shows in North America, starting on 13 February 2027. Tickets for the shows went on sale to fans via presale at 10am local time October 27th (N.America) and 10am October 28th (UK / Ireland), with general sale that began on the tail-end of October.
North America, UK & Ireland shows
13 February – Philadelphia, Franklin Music Hall
17 February – Brooklyn, Steel
19 February – Washington, Anthem
20 February – Pittsburgh, Roxian Theatre
22 February – Buffalo, Asbury Hall
23 February – Toronto, History
25 February – Chicago, Salt Shed (Indoor)
26 February – Milwaukee, Riverside Theater
27 February – Madison, The Sylvee
2 March – Boise, Knitting Factory
3 March – Spokane, Knitting Factory
5 March – Vancouver, Vogue Theatre
6 March – Seattle, Paramount Theater
8 March – Portland, Revolution Hall
10 March – Oakland, Fox Theater
12 March – San Diego, The Observatory North Park
13 March – Phoenix, The Van Buren
14 March – Los Angeles, Hollywood Palladium
23 April – Glasgow, o2 Academy
26 April – Aberdeen, Music Hall
27 April – Dundee, LiveHouse
29 April – Dublin, 3Olympia
1 May – Manchester, Victoria Warehouse
2 May – Birmingham, o2 Academy 1
4 May – Bristol, o2 Academy 1
5 May – Norwich, The LCR UEA
6 May – London, o2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
See chvrch.es for ticket information and details of how to sign up for presale access.
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