Alvvays’ Molly Rankin: ‘We drive others crazy with our wants’
‘There is a world that we insist on inhabiting’ … L-R: Sheridan Riley, Abbey Blackwell, Molly Rankin, Alec O’Hanley, Kerri MacLellan of Alvvays. Photograph: Eleanor Petry The Canadian indie-rock band has finally released Blue Rev, one of the year’s greatest albums, after a five-year hiatus. Reflecting on their “strange and familiar” sound, perfectionism, and Morrissey fanaticism, […]
By
LNGFRM Team
Published October 13, 2022
‘There is a world that we insist on inhabiting’ … L-R: Sheridan Riley, Abbey Blackwell, Molly Rankin, Alec O’Hanley, Kerri MacLellan of Alvvays. Photograph: Eleanor Petry
The Canadian indie-rock band has finally released Blue Rev, one of the year’s greatest albums, after a five-year hiatus. Reflecting on their “strange and familiar” sound, perfectionism, and Morrissey fanaticism, their lead vocalist and guitarist
Alvvays’ music may be shrouded in haze and roiled by distortion waves, yet it has a steely precision. Although lead singer and guitarist Molly Rankin claims the five-year gap between 2017’s Antisocialites and this year’s Blue Rev “wasn’t supposed to be this long,” you can’t help but listen to the album and hear an impulse to make every guitar solo fizz and to imbue each song with a jolting sense of surprise. The Canadian quintet’s driving indie-rock tracks are constructed around euphoric key changes, surprising codas, and heartbreaking grace Naturally, Rankin responds in the classic perfectionist manner when asked whether she is a perfectionist: “I mean, I wouldn’t use the word perfect.”
In reality, Rankin and her bandmates—guitarist Alec O’Hanley, keyboardist Kerri MacLellan, bassist Abbey Blackwell, drummer Sheridan Riley—make music with a ruthlessly rigorous ear. They also composed the record together. They don’t have personalities, and it’s obvious they aren’t motivated by a desire to perform well on the festival main stage. Instead, they’re possibly obsessively attempting to replicate the spirit, if not the precise sound, of iconic 80s and 90s indie bands like Dolly Mixture, the Smiths, and Teenage Fanclub. The five band members are presently living in a Toronto condo ahead of a global tour. “There is a world that we insist on inhabiting, and to get into that world it takes a lot of time,” explains Rankin, Zooming. Making anything sound rough, gorgeous, odd, and familiar requires a lot of effort.
According to those indicators, Blue Rev, named after the sweet, caffeinated alcoholic beverage Rankin and MacLellan would consume as teenagers growing up on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, found Alvvays to be well-funded. It is a literary shredder, a white-knuckled daydreamer, and a mild-mannered barnstormer whose songs masterfully pluck out complicated emotional strands from the slightest elements. It has a beautifully paradoxical soul. I spotted your sister at the drugstore picking up / Said you had that new love glow. Rankin’s lyrics, which continue to focus on life’s times of stasis and great change, are crisper than ever. Sensitive yet accurate, they may be stunningly emotional (“Is she a perfect 10? Have you discovered Christ once more?”), yet always record every day events through a loving, wry perspective. Alvvays’ peculiarities are allowed to run free on this album because, according to Rankin, she has ceased “caring as much about what people think” between albums: “Maybe I’ve gotten a little bit weirder as time has gone on.”
Molly Rankin performs with Alvvays at Islington Assembly Hall, London on 7 October 2022. Photograph: Lorne Thomson/Redferns
The “familiar” aspect of Alvvays’ music has always made them seem like a band in direct dialogue with their influences: Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub performed on Antisocialites, and its tune Lollipop (Ode to Jim) was titled in honor of Jim Reid of the Jesus and Mary Chain. Here, those allusions are even more overt; for example, one song is named after Television’s Tom Verlaine, and Belinda Says alludes to Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is a Place on Earth, with the line “Belinda says heaven is a place on earth / Well so is hell” indicating the song’s hairpin turn towards a brutal conclusion. Pressed, Rankin’s attempt to “unleash my inner Morrissey,” is a superb and appropriately romantic-yet-misanthropic Smiths homage.
According to Rankin, the band’s early years, when they were living on Prince Edward Island and attempting to figure out how to incorporate the alchemy of the songs they adored into their own music, left behind a feeling of fandom. It was a desire to attempt and harness those elements since there may be a gap between the music you love and the music you produce. Ultimately, however, I believe it ends up simply sounding like our band. It’s impossible for me to sound like Teenage Fanclub, no matter how hard I try.
The thought that worship may not be as straightforward as it was in one’s childhood might be a thorny aspect of fandom that becomes more obvious with time. The Smiths are often mentioned when Rankin is asked about her inspirations, so I question her, from one Smiths fan to another, how she has dealt with the recent years, during which Morrissey has shown sympathy for far-right political organizations.
“Because I love the idea of two people with great ideas colliding at a very specific time and making something really beautiful and timeless, I feel very invested in the Smiths – so you might have to pry that from my cold dead hands,” she says. “It doesn’t mean that I agree with the views of Morrissey and where he’s gone with all that – you know, justice for Johnny Marr.”
The band started creating music immediately after the release of Antisocialites, but because to Covid border limitations, Rankin, O’Hanley, and MacLellan were unable to personally connect with Blackwell and Riley, who were located in the US. Nevertheless, even in the absence of current world events, the band’s creative process still seems, at least in part, laborious: “I’m pretty picky about the arc of a song and not afraid to abandon things to the cutting room floor,” adds Rankin. She and O’Hanley will experiment with small changes to the guitar or vocal lines while recording (“He could be in an isolation booth and I’m yelling out notes to him to play variations of his riffs… or I’m in the booth and he’s telling me alternate lyrics”), and Rankin claims she’s constantly trying to “hunt down” emotional depth in her songs through the use of dropouts or key changes or any other number of musical devices.
The way Rankin and O’Hanley approach Alvvays appears to be aggressive, almost Andersson and Ulvaeus-like. A rare luxury in a world where indie bands often have to crank out recordings in order to be able to tour—the only location any band can really expect to earn a living—is what the band sacrifices in flashiness: they prefer to take their time to make things great.
“I do think that we probably drive people crazy, Alec and I, with the things that we want – if I want something to look a certain way and you’re not willing to do it, I’ll learn how to do it myself.” says Rankin. That bullish commitment to the band’s shared vision, though, has resulted in one of the year’s best rock records; the five-year wait may have been protracted by Covid, but it wasn’t unnecessary. “I’m really stubborn,” says Rankin. “If someone is grilling me about when things are going to be finished, I dig my heels in – and say ‘Whenever I want it to be finished’.”
Frank DiBernardo handles LNGFRM's Foodie and Miscellaneous writing tasks. He's always getting ideas from users, so don't be afraid to send an email to the editor.
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