Antisocialites wrestled with the woes of the now, especially the anxieties of inching toward adulthood. This record is fun and often funny, from the hilarious reply-guy bash of “Very Online Guy” to the parodic grind of “Pomeranian Spinster.”Īlvvays’ self-titled debut, released when much of the band was still in its early 20s, offered speculation about a distant future-marriage, professionalism, interplanetary citizenship. The results are beyond question: Blue Rev has more twists and surprises than Alvvays’ cumulative past, and the band seems to revel in these taken chances. Keyboardist Kerri MacLellan joined Rankin and guitarist Alec O’Hanley to write more this time, reinforcing the band’s collective quest to break patterns heard on their first two albums. Their roommate, in-demand bassist Blackwell, finds the center of a song and entrenches it. Notice the way, for instance, that “Tom Verlaine” bursts into a jittery jangle then marvel at the drums and drum machines ricocheting off one another, the harmonies that crisscross, and the stacks of guitar that rise between riff and hiss, subtle but essential layers that reveal themselves in time.Įvery element of Alvvays leveled up in the long interim between albums: Riley is a classic dynamo of a drummer, with the power of a rock deity and the finesse of a jazz pedigree. This hybridized approach allowed the band to harness each song’s absolute core, then grace it with texture and depth.
And then, as Everett has done on recent albums by The War on Drugs and Kacey Musgraves, he spent an obsessive amount of time alongside Alvvays filling in the cracks, roughing up the surfaces, and mixing the results.
#CUTTING MOMENTS FULL#
On the second day, they ripped through Blue Rev front-to-back twice, pausing only 15 seconds between songs and only 30 minutes between full album takes. Alvvays are fans of fastidious demos, making maps of new tunes so complete they might as well have topographical contour lines.īut in October 2021, when they arrived at a Los Angeles studio with fellow Canadian Shawn Everett, he urged them to forget the careful planning they’d done and just play the stuff, straight to tape. This perfectly dovetailed sound stems from an unorthodox-and, for Alvvays, wholly surprising-recording process, unlike anything they’ve ever done. The songs of Blue Rev thrive on immediacy and intricacy, so good on first listen that the subsequent spins where you hear all the details are an inevitability. The luminous poser kiss-off of “Velveteen,” the lovelorn confusion of “Tile by Tile,” the panicked but somehow reassuring rush of “After the Earthquake”. There are newly aggressive moments here-the gleeful and snarling guitar solo at the heart of opener “Pharmacist,” or the explosive cacophony near the middle of “Many Mirrors.” And there are some purely beautiful spans, too-the church- organ fantasia of “Fourth Figure,” or the blue-skies bridge of “Belinda Says.” But the power and magic of Blue Rev stems from Alvvays’ ability to bridge ostensible binaries, to fuse elements that seem antithetical in single songs-cynicism and empathy, anger and play, clatter and melody, the soft and the steely. There are 14 songs on Blue Rev, making it not only the longest Alvvays album but also the most harmonically rich and lyrically provocative.
They have, in part and sum, never been better. They subsequently lost a rhythm section and, due to border closures, couldn’t rehearse for months with their masterful new one, drummer Sheridan Riley and bassist Abbey Blackwell.Īt least the five-year wait was worthwhile: Blue Rev doesn’t simply reassert what’s always been great about Alvvays but instead reimagines it. A watchful thief then broke into singer Molly Rankin’s apartment and swiped a recorder full of demos, one day before a basement flood nearly ruined all the band’s gear. Alvvays toured more than expected, a surefire interruption for a band that doesn’t write on the road. Global lockdowns notwithstanding, circumstances both ordinary and entirely unpredictable stunted those sessions. In fact, the band began writing and cutting its first bits soon after releasing 2017’s Antisocialites, that stunning sophomore record that confirmed the Toronto quintet’s status atop a new generation of winning and whip-smart indie rock. Alvvays never intended to take five years to finish their third album, the nervy joyride that is the compulsively lovable Blue Rev.
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