This story is featured in CityBeat's April 3 print edition.
Touring behind their highly-lauded third album, Blue Rev, the Toronto-based indie rock band Alvvays is bringing their emotionally resonant dream pop to Cincinnati.
Alvvays have been on a steady upward trajectory since first gaining attention for their hit song “Archie, Marry Me” in 2013. It’s a song that manages to sound both pleading and anthemic, as if the narrator is begging the titular Archie to join hands in matrimony, but if not, then to hell with it; she’ll be just fine on her own.
“Archie” wasn’t simply a one-off, either. Alvvays’ songs have an instant familiarity to them; they feel like classics on the first listen. Blue Rev’s “After the Earthquake” is a perfect example. The song seems to take a page from Johnny Marr’s playbook as a reverb-drenched arpeggiated guitar riff is introduced, a second shimmering delayed guitar chimes in, and drums announce themselves like a starting pistol. The song races breathlessly forward and so do singer Molly Rankin’s vocals as she recounts the slow demise of a relationship, “looking back to those vibrant days” when she could once throw “caution to the breeze.”
In a similar vein, “Easy On Your Own?” challenges the subject of the song to “say it’s over” if they “don’t like it,” asking “Does it get easy on your own?” The question sounds like a taunt and an earnest appeal at the same time. It’s easy to detect Alvvays’ influences — The Smiths, the sweetly sardonic lyricism of Stephin Merritt, Teenage Fanclub, Beach House — but they wear them lightly, instead opting to meld such disparate parts into a mesmerizing whole.
Alvvays are keeping busy touring behind Blue Rev and will embark on a North American tour in early April, with Ohio as their first stop. With spring on the way, there are plenty of vibrant days ahead of us. The music of Alvvays provides a fitting soundtrack to each one of them.
Alvvays play Bogart’s on April 19 at 8 p.m. Info: bogarts.com.
