NORTH AMERICAN HEADLINE DATES KICK OFF NEXT MONTH
TORONTO, ON July 23, 2024 – In February 2024, just shy of the tenth anniversary of Alvvays’ self-titled debut, its second song and single, “Archie, Marry Me,” reached a rarified threshold for our streaming age—one-hundred million listens through a single platform.
For the world’s biggest pop stars that’s an average achievement, but for an upstart indie rock band then writing in a backroad farmhouse on a Canadian island, it represented a staggering proof of connection and widespread resonance. Makes sense, after all: “Archie, Marry Me” is a softly stinging, pointedly funny portrait of a common end-of-youth predicament—to wed or not to wed, to involve the state and the possibility of financial ruin when you’re already saddled with student loans and just trying to survive. Instantly relatable, it is an anthem about prescribed social expectations and delighting, however noncommittally, in outcast status.
As part of their North American tour starting next month, alvvays will play two shows at Toronto’s newly reopened and legendary, Concert Hall December 5 – 6.
Remastered and reissued with new deep cut “Underneath Us” out November 15
Now remastered and reissued with deep cut “Underneath Us” to mark a glorious decade of deadpan jangle, Alvvays feels that way from end to end—literally, from the opening stalking-you-with-love anthem “Adult Diversion” to the ennui escapism of sci-fi closer “Red Planet.”
In a little more than 30 minutes, Alvvays give us a song about loving someone to actual death (“Next of Kin”), how keeping secrets will destroy what you think you want (“The Agency Group”), and another incisive song about the societal demands of love and marriage (“Atop a Cake”). When Molly Rankin, Alec O’Hanley, Kerri MacLellan, and Brian Murphy cut these songs with Chad VanGaalen in 2013, long before they had a record deal, they were, in fact, young adults trying to figure out these encroaching exigencies for themselves. Again, these problems don’t age; some of us just happen to be lucky enough to age out of them.
Little of this would matter if the songs themselves didn’t stick, if the melodies weren’t as timeless as the topics. But the tension between Alvvays’ shimmer and snap and Rankin’s knowingly droll delivery connects these numbers to a brilliant and deep rock continuum, from the glories of C86 and the triumphs of Athens in the ’80s to Celtic folk’s own magnetic candor. Each of these songs lands several hooks apiece: the sparkling drum-machine drift of “Dives,” the noise-caked sway of “The Agency Group,” and, of course, the half-diffident and half-confident matrimonial plea of “Archie, Marry Me” and that pearly guitar lick. Ten years ago or ten years from now, here are ten songs to slip in your pocket and pull out when the decisions of the world seem to swirl like the very guitars that shape them.
Blue vinyl
The newly reissued vinyl, mastered by Bernie Grundman, will feature remastered audio, as well as the bonus track “Underneath Us,” and be available on cerulean blue vinyl with a hand drawn poster by Chad Van Gaalen. Out November 15th and available via https://alvvays.com/
Tracklist:
1. Adult Diversion
2. Archie, Marry Me
3. Ones Who Love You
4. Next of Kin
5. Party Police
6. The Agency Group
7. Dives
8. Atop a Cake
9. Red Planet
10. Underneath Us (Vinyl Only Bonus Track)
Alvvays Tour Dates
July 28 – Seoul, KR – Have A Nice Trip Festival
August 2 – St John, NB – Area 506
August 4 – Montreal, QC – Osheaga Festival
August 8 – Oslo, NO – Øyafestivalen
August 9 – Gothenburg, SE – Way Out West
August 11 – Helsinki, FI – Flowfestival
August 14 – San Diego, CO – The Sound % LOW TIX
August 15 – San Luis Obispo, CA – Madonna Inn %
August 16 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theater % SOLD OUT
August 18 – Portland, OR – PDX Live @ Pioneer Square % LOW TIX
August 19 – Seattle, WA – Seattle Zoo % SOLD OUT
August 21 – Spokane, WA – Knitting Factory %
August 22 – Boise, ID – Treefort Music Hall %
August 23 – Salt Lake City, UT – Ogden Twilight %
August 24 – Denver, CO – Mission Ballroom %
August 31 – Columbia, MD – Merriweather Post Pavilion ^ SOLD OUT
December 5 – Toronto, ON – The Concert Hall #
December 6 – Toronto, ON – The Concert Hall # LOW TIX
December 7 – Toronto, ON – The Concert Hall # SOLD OUT
% w/ The Beths
^ w/ Mitski
# w/ cootie catcher
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