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First single “Pharmacist” is a masterclass in indie rock…
"...a distinct emotional undertow, like a stirring dream that ends a little too soon" - The New York Times
“Pharmacist”
is overblown in all the right ways, with all the meticulously layered
noise growing into a thicket around Rankin’s tender nostalgia." - Pitchfork
"First
single and album opener “Pharmacist” might as well be the Big Bang,
exploding outward to form the beginnings of a new era of Alvvays." - Stereogum
"The
always-incredible Alvvays have returned after five long years with
“Pharmacist" — a gloriously fuzzed-out blast of energy that spells good
things for the band’s third album, Blue Rev. Drawing from the
high-energy, “Lollipop”/”Hey”/”Saved By A Waif” side of the band’s
catalog, it’s a very welcome, and pleasingly unexpected, comeback." -
Paper
"complete
with a frenetic and exciting guitar solo to cap off what can only be
described as a fantastic set-up for this long-awaited album cycle" - Uproxx
"From the sound of its jangly lead single, “Pharmacist,” it’s already looking to be a brilliant new page for the band" - Nylon
More on Blue Rev…
Alvvays never intended to take five years to finish their third album, the nervy joyride that is the compulsively lovable Blue Rev. 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.
Global
lockdowns notwithstanding, circumstances both ordinary and entirely
unpredictable stunted those sessions. Alvvays toured more than expected,
a surefire interruption for a band that doesn’t write on the road. 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. 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.
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.
This perfectly dovetailed sound stems from an unorthodox—and, for
Alvvays, wholly surprising—recording process, unlike anything they’ve
ever done. Alvvays are fans of fastidious demos, making maps of new
tunes so complete they might as well have topographical contour lines.
But
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. 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. 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.
Every
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. Their roommate, in-demand bassist
Blackwell, finds the center of a song and entrenches it. 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.
Alvvays’
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. Antisocialites
wrestled with the woes of the now, especially the anxieties of inching
toward adulthood. Named for the sugary alcoholic beverage Rankin and
MacLellan used to drink as teens on rural Cape Breton, Blue Rev
looks both back at that country past and forward at an uncertain world,
reckoning with what we lose whenever we make a choice about what we
want to become.
Sure,
it arrives a few years later than expected, but the answer for Alvvays
is actually simple: They’ve changed gradually, growing on Blue Rev into one of their generation’s most complete and riveting rock bands.
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