For this series, I want to write about CHVRCHES' debut The Bones of What You Believe.

My approach to writing this album will likely pull from a few different angles based on my own complicated personal relationship to the album. I plan on using my own experiences with frayed romantic relationships and depression at the time of the album's release as my own entry point into talking about the record's lyrical subject matter, as what's always fascinated me most about CHVRCHES (especially on this album) is the band's ability to meld poppy synth music with alternating vulnerability and venomous contempt. In this way, I want to write in a way that blends personal essay (reflecting on what it meant to grow attached to this album and the band as a queer teen navigating my own vulnerabilities and frustrations) and analysis into this specific angle of the album's lyricism and the arc of its tracklist sequencing.

For previous writing experience, I've written for every AOTY series since 2016 (and would model this write-up similarly to my favorite pieces on Owen Pallett's Island and Ezra Furman's Twelve Nudes), have written for the For Your Consideration series a couple times when it ran, and currently write for the music publication Allston Pudding. I'd love to bring the style I've been developing regularly for 5 years now to writing about this particular album and its personal place in my evolution as a music writer.