I’m going to touch on the entire discography here for Blue Sky Archives, it’s only 3 EPs, each with 3 songs, and a couple of singles. So it’s effectively just, one album’s worth of music. But first I want to touch on why the group is significant. It’s a precursor band to one of my favorite bands, CHVRCHES. Specifically, it’s one of two groups that CHVRCHES lead singer Lauren Mayberry was a part of before CHVRCHES. The albums themselves (maybe not all, but Triple-A Side for sure) were produced by Iain Cook, also of CHVRCHES.
Anyway, the three EPs are, Blue Sky Archives (Self Titled), Plural, and Triple-A Side.
I hope to also get to some of the other projects by Martin and Iain as well at some point.
I also did a bit of research on this, group as well, at least, the best I could. Of the five members of Blue Sky Archives, as far as I can tell, aside from Lauren, only Matthew Phelan ever did any other music work. The only real place for these credits I could find was on Discogs though. So this wasn’t really a band that went on to produce many known acts.
It’s also worth noting that the style is quite a bit different from both CHVRCHES and Lauren Mayberry’s own solo work. It’s a very mess sounding Indie Rock Pop sound, with lot of guitar and drums, and vocals that are, alright, but nothing amazing. Of the 9 tracks on the 3 albums, Lauren does lead vocals on 5 of them, and some sort of backing vocals on the others. This is reversed with one of the male members of the band for the other 4 tracks, though I can’t say which because none of them are listed with vocal credits on Discogs, though another blog I found suggests it was Matthew Phelan.
If it feels like I’m rambling a bit, I probably am. I suppose I should get on to the music part. These 3 EPs are… inoffensively, alright? The songs are all decent enough, but also feel extremely cluttered and definitely very, amateur experimental in nature. They aren’t bad at all though they aren’t exceptionally good either.
(Total Side note, I wonder if that red tambourine is the same one Lauren has been using in CHVRCHES and her own solo gig. Probably not, but the red tambourine has become kind of a funny staple.)
It also probably doesn’t help that it’s also definitely music for the age it was created. Messy Indie Rock Alternative. Kind of a genre that is too messy to be truly “Quirky Indie” sound, but not messy enough to really be real rock music.
If I was picking my favorite tracks, I’d probably go with Dear Middle Aged Ponytail, A Mighty Handful, and Cosplay The Hard Way. Two of these are on the EP Plural, so I suppose that makes it the best of the three. There is also a cover version of Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name, which, given the style, is an interesting take, but really doesn’t work very well at all.
The entire set feels like it’s mostly just going to be interesting to people interested in CHVRCHES historia. On the tracks Lauren is singing, you can actually hear a subtle improvement in sound if you listen to the tracks in order, though the earlier ones feel a bit choppy, however I am not really sure if that was the intended style. It does kind of fit with watching the evolution of CHVRCHES a bit, as she also evolved her sound quite a bit there, going from someone who looked almost terrified on the mic to someone dancing around the stage covered in fake blood a decade later.
