Oh Archie, what have you done? It’s been three years since Alvvays’ self-titled album, a most auspicious indie-pop debut that doubled as a dog-eared short-story collection. Its breakout track was “Archie, Marry Me,” the rare proposal that could rhyme “matrimony” with “alimony” and still sweep people off their feet, but acerbic wit and heart-tugging melody could be found all through the succinct nine-song set. You pronounced their name “always” because you expected them to last.
Alvvays themselves have hardly been gone at all. The Toronto band spent most of the past few years playing bigger and bigger stages, including Glastonbury in 2015 and Coachella in 2016, not long after lead singer Molly Rankin joined the Jesus and Mary Chain onstage at a festival in Australia. They’ve also been road-testing new material. The band’s second album, Antisocialites, conspicuously lacks an “Archie,” whether musically or romantically, but it’s another batch of thoroughly accomplished songs. Alvvays have sharpened their focus without losing sight of themselves.
Rankin, who grew up on the East Coast of Nova Scotia as part of a famous family of Celtic folk musicians, certainly wasn’t brought up on the NME cassette compilation that became synonymous with winsome, ’60s-dappled guitar pop. She and Alvvays guitarist Alec O’Hanley bonded over Scotland’s C86-descended power-pop heroes Teenage Fanclub, but both understandably seem to bristle at being pigeonholed. In one recent interview, they noted how acclaim for Alvvays’ debut sometimes treated it as almost a guilty pleasure. “I just really like to write pop songs and I don’t really care what genre that is,” Rankin said in another.
The musty ambience of Chad Van Gaalen’s production on their debut has turned bright and clear on Antisocialites, with O’Hanley co-producing alongside John Congleton, who’s overseen big-ticket indie albums from artists including Future Islands and St. Vincent. Alvvays can still kick up a piercing dream-pop din, but now it’s less muffled by reverb and digital distortion. The reference point here is less “Archie” than another Alvvays single, “Party Police,” with its mournful synths and weary entreaty, “You don’t have to leave, you could just stay here with me.” Apparently, this person has left, but Alvvays’ endearing songcraft is intact.
“Dreams Tonite,” a live staple since early last year, showcases this slight shift toward synth-y melancholy, but for all its insistent hooks, Rankin also analyzes a broken relationship from a wealth of vantage points, introduces the album’s title phrase, and indulges in lovelorn wordplay (“So morose for me, seeing ghosts of me, writing oaths for me”). Better yet, in a similar vein, is “Not My Baby,” an aching and ethereal song that bum-bums like the answer to the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” These iterations of Alvvays could get booked for the Roadhouse on “Twin Peaks: The Return.”
Antisocialites isn’t all downtempo and forlorn. “Your Type,” a song that has been around since before the debut album, is an uproarious garage-rock tune about a conspiracy theory-spouting art-museum ejectee who feels molecularly incompatible (“Let me state delicately/You’re an O and I’m AB”). Surf-tinged single “Plimsoll Punks” bops up against the barriers of scene and genre as Rankin, channeling the Television Personalities’ proto-C86 classic “Part Time Punks,” vividly skewers unspecified stick-in-the-muds (“You’re the seashell in my sandal that’s slicing up my heel”). Alvvays broaden their palette on these faster songs, too, evoking Stereolab in the motorik freakout of “Hey,” which is memorable for introducing a drunken alter ego known as “Molly Mayhem,” but more powerfully insists, “It feels like forever since you held me like I was a human being/And I am a human being.” We’re human, and we need to be loved.
It’s interesting to hear how Alvvays nod to their vaunted indie forebears while also stretching against the limitations of being too closely associated with the past. Lovelorn opener “In Undertow,” one of the best tracks here, features none other than Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake on backing vocals. “Lollipop (Ode to Jim)” nods toward her JAMC stagemate Jim Reid through Psychocandy-like screeches and a sunny ditty about an acid trip, as Rankin sharply implores, “Alter my state to get through this date.”
Another way to consider Alvvays’ preferred place in the music landscape is through their usual choices in covers. They’ve done Kirsty MacColl’s “He’s on the Beach,” also performed by the Lemonheads, solidifying a connection to both vivid lyrical narratives and fuzzed-out guitars. They’ve adapted a song by the C86-adjacent band the Primitives and taken a Deerhunter B-side “Nosebleed” and made it their own. Those aren’t the most varied of selections, but like Alvvays stagemates Big Thief and Courtney Barnett, they push toward a larger narrative. “Archie, Marry Me” looked at eternity through the lens of the mundane. Antisocialites’ finale “Forget About Life,” a gorgeously spare singalong that’s sure to highlight future live sets, only wants to find respite tonight, drinking cheap wine amid the condos. Archie was worried about mounting student loans and stagnant wages, but now there are more existential problems. Alvvays have grown, too.
