Album Review: Alvvays – “Alvvays”

By: Maria Sokulsky-Dolnycky (@marisodo) – 

In July, Toronto typically becomes engulfed in humidity, and a halo of haze distorts and softens our surroundings. It is serendipitous, then, that this month will see the release of Alvvays, the much-anticipated sun-soaked debut LP by the band of the same name.

Alvvays (pronounced “Always”) is comprised of Molly Rankin (whose forebears comprised the celebrated folk collective The Rankin Family), Alec O’Hanley (formerly of Two Hours Traffic), Brian Murphy and Phil MacIsaac (of The Danks), and Rankin’s childhood friend Kerri MacLellan. The band’s members hail from the East Coast, principally Cape Breton and P.E.I., though now the band is based in Toronto.

Alvvays built local hype with the release of the tracks “Adult Diversion” and “Archie, Marry Me” (both of which appear on the debut album), and toured with the likes of Said the Whale, Peter Bjorn and John, and The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, as well as giving highly lauded performances at industry festivals SXSW and NXNE.

On the debut release, the band recruited an all-star of sonic wizards, including the wonderful and quirky Chad Vangaalen as producer, and Graham Walsh of Holy Fuck and John Agnello (whose resume includes Kurt Vile and Sonic Youth) to mix the album.

Alvvays opens with the addictive and downright beachy “Adult Diversion”; the jangly guitar and drum intro makes me want to do The Monkey or The Swim, while the sherbet-sweet harmonies and wall-of-sound fuzzed-out guitars are reminiscent of Best Coast’s Crazy For You, and all the while Rankin’s placid vocals balance the bouncy, energetic instrumentals.

Sanguine melodies and buoyant choruses belie Rankin’s discontented lyricism, approached with a healthy sense of humour. On the soaring and expansive “Archie, Marry Me”, she sings “You’ve expressed explicitly your contempt for matrimony / You’ve student loans to pay and will not risk the alimony”, and her voice carries the earnest, throaty tones and inflections of The Vaccines’ Justin Hayward-Young.

“Ones Who Love You” is painfully pretty, and “Next of Kin” offers the listener yet another aural escape to the beach, while “Dives” is dreamy and metrically irregular, and “Atop a Cake” is notoriously cute and catchy. Melodies and hooks that are infectious and guaranteed to be stuck in your head, whether you like it or not, dominate the album. The overt accessibility and sweetness of this record turns a bit sickly, like on the saccharine “Party Police”, but the record goes down easy.

The album ends on an overtly melancholy note with “Red Planet”, a synth-centric tune with a lilting melody that soars; the listener gets the feeling of being suspended in the pale blue water of an aquarium, or in the vacuum of outer space and gazing into the endless abyss (think Sandra Bullock in Gravity).

Overall, catchiness and accessibility round out a stllar summertime debut with warm sonic hues. Grab some friends, hop on your bikes, cruise around town and bathe in the hazy golden sunlight of Alvvays.

Alvvays comes out July 22^nd on Royal Mountain Records.

Essential Tracks: “Adult Diversion” and “Archie, Marry Me”.