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Home / Arts / Alvvays announce World Tour, play Toronto’s Bud Stage in August

Alvvays announce World Tour, play Toronto’s Bud Stage in August

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Toronto, ON (February 28, 2023) – Following the release of their critically acclaimed, instant-classic album Blue Rev, Alvvays have announced a co-headline tour with fellow indie-rock sensation Alex G for a stacked North American tour. Ahead of the co-headline run’s Toronto stop at Budweiser Stage on August 28, Alvvays will also be joining Maggie Rogers for a show at the Hollywood Bowl on August 13th.

The Toronto-via-Charlottetown alt rockers kick off the Canadian leg of their spring tour in Ottawa on March 1st, which will make its way across Canada before wrapping at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom on March 17th. A full rundown of all upcoming tour dates can be found below and the general on sale starts this Friday 3/3 at 10AM local time. 

Alvvays recently released their KEXP live session and this excellent cover of Jane Wiedlin’s “Rush Hour” for Sirius XMU. 

The band received an onslaught of attention on 2022 Year-End lists, including “Belinda Says” being named the #1 song of the year by Pitchfork, #1 on Stereogum’s official and reader’s poll album of the year lists, and they took the #1 spot on FLOOD MagazineGood Morning America, and Exclaim’s lists as well.

The Canadian quintet kicked off 2023 with their late night TV debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Performing “Belinda Says” the band ripped through the beloved song accompanied by a string trio proving 2023 will be the year of Alvvays domination. 

Here are all of the tour dates Alvvays has slated for 2023.

Alvvays 2023 World Tour Dates:

March 1 – Ottawa, ON @ Bronson Centre $ [SOLD OUT]

March 2 – Ottawa, ON @ Bronson Centre $ [SOLD OUT]

March 3 – Montreal, QC @ MTELUS $

March 4 – London, ON @ London Music Hall $

March 5 – Detroit, MI @ Majestic $ [SOLD OUT]

March 8 – Winnipeg, MB @ Burton Cummings Theatre #

March 9 – Saskatoon, SK @ Coors Event Centre #

March 10 – Edmonton, AB @ Midway #

March 11 – Calgary, AB @ MacEwan Hall #

March 13 – Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory $

March 15 – Victoria, BC @ Capital Ballroom # [SOLD OUT]

March 16 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom # [SOLD OUT]

March 17 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom # [SOLD OUT]

May 24 – London, UK @ Forum &

May 25 – London, UK @ Forum &

May 26 – Derbyshire, UK @ Bearded Theory Festival

May 27 – Bristol, UK @ Dot To Dot Festival

May 28 – Nottingham, UK @ Dot To Dot Festival

May 30 – Manchester, UK @ New Century & [SOLD OUT]

May 31 – Glasgow, UK @ Galvanizers & [SOLD OUT]

June 02 – Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Sound

June 04 – Paris, France @ Trabendo & [SOLD OUT]

June 05 – Brussels, Belgium @ Botanique & [SOLD OUT]

June 06 – Berlin, Germany @ Astra Kulturhaus &

June 08 – Porto, Portugal @ Primavera Sound

June 09 – Madrid, Spain @ Primavera Sound

June 9 – June 11 – Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands @ Best Kept Secret Festival

July 28 – Omaha, NE @ Maha Festival

August 13 – Hollywood Bowl @ Los Angeles, CA ^

August 23 – Brooklyn NY @ Prospect Park *

August 25 – Boston, MA @ Leader Bank Pavilion *

August 26 – Philadelphia, PA @ Dell Center *

August 27 – Martha’s Vineyard, MA @ Beach Road Festival

August 28 – Toronto, ON @ The Budweiser Stage *

August 30 – Detroit, MI @ Royal Oak *

August 31 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE *

 September 1 – Buffalo, NY @ Art Park *

$ w/ Disq

# w/ Big Rig

& w/ Ex-Vöid

^ w/ Maggie Rogers

* co-headline date w/ Alex G

Alvvays, Blue Rev

More about their third studio album 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.

lead photo by Norman Wong

Other articles from totimes.ca – otttimes.ca – mtltimes.ca

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