The heartbroken patience of ‘Red Plantet’ closed Alvvays’ self-titled debut – spinning a web of waiting, and gesturing towards endless cycles of temporary distraction and emptiness. Although a fitting end to an album littered with semi-mid-life beginnings and endings, the final act of the starry-eyed darling’s exploration of the “pathetic perspective” offered more of a question than a conclusion – the words “how do you move on?” hanging high above the head of Toronto-hailing front-woman Molly Rankin. However, it would seem that following 3-years of silence, Rankin has finally answered the unspoken question she left behind, as she responds to her former-self, “you find a wave and try to hold on” against walls of sugary, AM-Radio bliss on sophomore-cut ‘In Undertow’ – speaking to the slow and painful reality of recovery.
Although uncomplicated, the four-chord nature of ‘In Undertow’ gifts a drunk-like state of euphoria – enveloping you in what Rankin describes as a “fantasy break-up arc” that takes place within Alvvays’ world of upward-reaching fuzz. Islands of needling dissection and doubt converse – leading you to a brightly blooming coda, as if the truth hidden within the repeated platitude of “there’s no turning back” has finally been unearthed – cutting through Rankin and leading to an iteration of the thought filled with enough sobering clarity to scale stagnancy’s frustratingly high walls and grant true, post-love wilderness.
Alvvay’s second full-length ‘Antisocialites’ is out September 8th 2017 via Polyvinyl Records.
Music Journalism student and lover of all things sensory and cosmic.
