Alvvays

One Liner: Top notch indie rock with pretty vocals and that Archie song

Wikipedia Genre: Indie pop, dream pop, shoegaze, twee pop
Home: Toronto

Poster Position: 12
Day: Friday at 2:45
Both Weekends.

Thoughts:  Pronounced as "always."  Don't be the dork old person who tries to play along with these shitty naming conventions and trips over your own feet in front of the cool kids.  The dumb spelling is, as usual, because there is already a band called "Always."  I looked up their music on Spotify and it kinda blows.  The better band ought to get to have the name.  And if your most popular song is called "Love and Death in Metroland," and sounds like a bad Psychedelic Furrs cover, then you should lose your band name.  Funny thing, if you type Always into the search bar on Spotify, you get this band anyway.  Suck it Always!

So, their Wikipedia bio says that the band formed, and then was working on creating music, while living on neighboring islands in eastern Canada.  "[Lead singer Molly] Rankin and MacLellan on Cape Breton and O'Hanley, MacIsaac, and Murphy hailing from Prince Edward Island—Rankin was led to dub the band "merging of obscure islands in the east coast."" 

I love this music.  I was super into their first album (2014's Alvvays - my review), but less enamored with the second album (2017's Antisocialites - I gave it a back-door thumbs up!).  After continuing to hear it for the past year, I like all of it now.  Bright, shimmery, sunny pop rock stuff, with lovely vocals.  Reminds me of Best Coast and The Sundays.  Their top track continues to be "Archie, Marry Me," with 18.3 million streams.  This is from that first album.

That chorus is greatness to just belt out.  And I very much like the feel of the gentle strummed open followed by the thump of the tune.  Great thump and rhythm.  I just dig it.  "Party Police," "Adult Diversion," and "Next of Kin" are also great songs on their debut.

On the second album, I'm going to give you more than one tune, because I feel like the most listened to doesn't line up with my favorite.  First, here is "Dreams Tonite," with 12.6 million streams.

Less rock thump, more of the dreamy pop qualities.  Still nice tune, just not as essential to me.  The one I like better from the new album is "Plimsoll Punks," which only has 3.7 million streams.

Live version but stays pretty true to the real deal.  80's echos in the guitars, as well as more of The Sundays on the vocal sound.  I tried to figure out what the song is about - a "Plimsoll" is apparently a type of shoe, with canvas on top and rubber on the bottom.  "This name arose, according to Nicholette Jones's book The Plimsoll Sensation, because the coloured horizontal band joining the upper to the sole resembled the Plimsoll line on a ship's hull, or because, just like the Plimsoll line on a ship, if water got above the line of the rubber sole, the wearer would get wet."  According to that article, Converse are Plimsolls.  So anytime I wear my Chucks and go jam out to punk tunes, I'm one of the Plimsoll Punks.  Hell yeah!

So yeah, I'm in.  I dig what these folks are laying down.  Let's do it.