Toronto's quintet Alvvays, featuring vocalist Molly Rankin and guitarist Alec O’Hanley, harked back to the simple songs of the 1960s on Alvvays (2014), with
peaks in Archie Marry Me (anthemic power-pop) and
Atop a Cake (a blend of the Byrds' jangling folk-rock and of the girl-groups of the era). And Francoise Hardy would have loved Dives.
Rankin's singing ranges effectively from tender to exuberant, as the genre demands.
Unfortunately, for the rest of the album she croons nostalgic pop ballads.
Antisocialites (2017) gathers a few more gems in that unassuming
style:
In Undertow, halfway shoegazing-rock and the first Velvet Underground album,
the feverish jangle-pop of Plimsoll Punks,
the punkish Your Type and
Saved By a Waif, two songs
that evoke the Dance Hall Crashers or at least the Go-Go's,
and especially the anthemic and psychedelic Hey.
The single Dreams Tonite, however, is a trite dance-pop ballad.
EP Alvvays (2018) Pecking Order
Blue Rev (2022), produced by Shawn Everett and recorded in a single day,
increased the guitar noise and pushed the vocals down into the dense mix.
The loud fuzz of Easy on Your Own? inevitably recalls
My Bloody Valentine but
Rankin is simply intoning an ode that would as well please the country crowd.
Throughout the album the fervor is often just bombast designed to hide the scarcity of good ideas. A trance-y tribute to Tom Verlaine fares better.
Soon the album changes course, starting with the
thick synth lines and pounding dance beat of Very Online Guy.
The band veers into the dirge Tile by Tile,
the romantic elegy Bored in Bristol, and so on.
Luckily there is still room for breathless rock'n'roll of Pomeranian Spinster, the third song to save.
