A few short months ago, Molly Rankin of the now-very-hot band Alvvays had thought she’d definitely be heading back to her old job at a Toronto pizza joint when her current tour finishes up. Now that the band is landing on many Best Of lists as 2014 ends, and the buzz surrounding the Toronto band continues to grow, her days as a server may be numbered. Ah the life of a Canadian musician.
The band landed on Rolling Stone’s top 50 year-end list, to name just one publication with a pretty solid rep in the music department. And Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard named the band’s big breakthrough hit “Archie, Marry Me” his favourite song of the year, and played a stripped-down cover of it during a recent concert.
“I don’t know, our existence is still pretty modest,” she says, over the phone during a stopover on the band’s current headlining tour. “We get our clothes from Salvation Army, we don’t have any sweet deals from Top Shop or anything like that. I mean, probably we’ll have to go back to our jobs. The Best Of lists are all sort of arbitrary, so we take everything with a grain of salt, the criticism and the praise.”
When we talked, Rankin and the band had finished up two months in Europe (with Real Estate) and the United States.
“It was really fun and people knew the words even there, which was a pleasant surprise,” says a modest Rankin. “It doesn’t happen everywhere, but it’s a nice incentive.”
Most assuredly, the audiences on this leg of the tour while crossing Canada will be very familiar with the music of Alvvays. Their first two singles “Adult Diversion” and the aforementioned “Archie, Marry Me” have garnered significant radio play, veering into serious ear-worm territory.
The band has a new wave edge with plenty of pop-infused melodies, but a lot of the appeal is in Rankin’s dry, humorous lyrics that tackle a lot of 20-something angst around marriage and growing up and getting a real job. They’re not preachy, just honest and fun and seem to hit home with a lot of listeners.
“I don’t really dole out advice to anyone,” she says. “I struggle with all of those things. That’s what I’ve been telling myself, looking into the mirror the last five years.”
Alvvays (Yes, it is pronounced ‘always’) is a Toronto band, but its members all grew up as East Coast island dwellers. Rankin, one of the Rankin Family who used to fiddle with the iconic Canadian group, is from Cape Breton and was childhood friends with fellow bandmate Kerri MacLellan. The three dudes in the band, Alec O'Hanley, Phil MacIsaac and Brian Murphy, are from Prince Edward Island.
“I met Alec when he was playing in another band through mutual friends,” says Rankin. “I sent him some demos, but I don’t think he liked them, but two years later we decided to play some songs, record some stuff together and we became friends and worked and wrote together and we just merged islands at some point and it’s been a nice marriage.”
While preparing to record their debut eponymous album, Rankin had two names in mind to twiddle the knobs in the production room: Norman Blake, whose work in Teenage Fanclub she had long-admired and Calgarian Chad VanGaalen.
“When we contacted him (Blake) he was in Scotland,” she explains. “We had wanted him because we’re all big fans but the timeline wasn’t really there, and we’d always wanted to work with Chad too. Norman Blake was a shot in the dark, and to be honest so was Chad.”
Although VanGaalen didn’t tinker too much, his skill at weaving in unique and somewhat haunting guitar tones helped add some texture to the band’s crisp sound.
The album was released this past summer, and Alvvays has managed to work a couple new songs into their set, but haven’t had a chance to do much serious writing while on their current tour, which continues until the end of April and includes a number of dates opening for The Decemberists.
Alvvays checks into The Opera House in Toronto this Saturday, Dec. 20 for a sold-out show, and are back opening for said Decemberists on March 30 at Massey Hall.
