| Track | Album |
|---|---|
| Archie, Marry Me | Alvvays |
| Dreams Tonite | Antisocialites |
| Ones Who Love You | Alvvays |
| Belinda Says | Blue Rev |
| After The Earthquake | Blue Rev |
| Atop A Cake | Alvvays |
| Hey | Antisocialites |
| Tom Verlaine | Blue Rev |
| Saved By A Waif | Antisocialites |
| The Agency Group | Alvvays |
John: We were chatting, Ruby and I, on the sofa, talking about Toppermost and the vast range of bands contained within that have inspired people to write about them. I may have misremembered, and I am sure she will correct me if I have, but she was idly speculating whether contributions had been made about bands she listened to in her teens. No, it turned out; I suggested she could write some. Then she wondered if there was one for Alvvays, a band we both love. No, it turned out; I suggested she could write it. Ruby countered well: maybe we could both write it, if nobody had reserved the right to write. I enquired within, and it turned out somebody had indeed reserved the right to write: me, a couple of years ago.
So, a happy accident brings us all to this Toppermost. It was a happy accident that introduced me to Alvvays back in 2014, when I was invited to review their debut album for the long-since defunct blog Dukla Prague Away Kit. I likened the album to the dessert trolley in a restaurant, and suggested Archie, Marry Me was the cheesecake. I’m not sure I would stick with that analogy now. It’s too good to be just cheesecake. I wonder which pudding Ruby would cast it as.
Ruby: It took me two decades to come to terms with the concept of cheesecake, but Archie, Marry Me did not require an adjustment period (the Alvvays equivalent of chocolate cake for me). The song was so perfect to me, probably aged 14 or 15 when I first heard it, that it took me years to seek out another Alvvays song.
At the table in the shared kitchen of my university halls, I heard Dreams Tonite for the first time. The second track from their second album, Antisocialites (and as close as a track can come to being a title track without actually being one), the song posed the question: if I saw you on the street would I have you in my dreams tonight? As an 18-year-old with a full and detailed dream journal I felt confident that, for me at least, the answer would be yes – and you’d be there with my GCSE Physics teacher and Arthur from the hit show Arthur.
John: Rode here on the bus, now you’re one of us … For all the years of my childhood we spent without a car, travelling to places by public transport, I can’t say I ever felt like I was being greeted as ‘one of them’ on my arrival anywhere. I would be very surprised if I entered anybody’s dreams at night, largely because dreams are full of weird stuff like, well, GCSE Physics teachers and ‘Arthur’.
My own dreams have frequently involved lightning. For years the bolts hovered in the distance, then gradually grew closer until one night the dream’s flash struck a mere foot away from me. The lightning began to move away, but has since started to get closer again. Maybe I’m listening to Ones Who Love You too much. From the off this has been one of my favourite Alvvays songs, track three in their debut album. It’s the most non-negotiable song in our Toppermost for me. The hushed vocals, drenched in reverb, with guitars that cascade like the rain that is falling in the scene where when lightning strikes I’ll be on my bike … and when the wheels come off I’ll be an astronaut, the fade in, the arpeggios; all perfect to my ears. Then there’s the icing on the cake: the spitting of the f-word, coming out of the blue like that flash of lightning, in the bridge. Just wonderful.
Ruby: Ones Who Love You has never been one of my favourites, but it is still a gem in Alvvays’ catalogue of gems. Before seeing Alvvays live in Kentish Town in 2023, I asked Dad what song he really wanted to hear, and this was it. Someone else must have heard him, because Ones Who Love You was added to the setlist that night.
It was preceded by Belinda Says, from their third and latest album Blue Rev. Despite what my Last.fm statistics might say, this one is my favourite Alvvays song and one of my non-negotiables for this Toppermost. Containing a shout-out to Belinda Carlisle and a key change which doesn’t invoke a grimace, it is to me the most perfect example of Alvvays’ talent for storytelling. I’d give you a synopsis but I think it’d be better if you just listened yourself.
John: The arrival of a new album by one of my favourite bands is often a cause for nervous anticipation. Will it be as good as [insert favourite other album by band here] or will it take the band away from me? It’s even more so when the new album is the band’s third; will there be a return to the feel of the debut, or further extension away from what made that first album so good. Bill Drummond argues quite convincingly that once you’ve heard a band’s debut album you will only ever be disappointed by what you hear next. There will be exceptions to the rule, inevitably, and Belinda Says is one of many stand-out tracks on Blue Rev.
I’ll throw in After The Earthquake from the same album for the very same reasons. There was a folky tone to some of Molly’s vocals on that first album, which is often something that will resonate with me. The same quality comes through on After The Earthquake, another song with a key change, another song that tells a good story, and another wistful song that made my stomach do a weird thing when I first heard it that I could not even begin to translate into comprehensible words.
Ruby: What I really love about Blue Rev as an album is just how full of noise it is. I could listen to it a hundred times (and I think I have) and hear something I hadn’t heard before each time. After The Earthquake is home to one of the quietest moments of the album, interrupted by what is possibly one of the loudest. It conveys an audible frustration through its overlapping vocals, pace changes and lyrics that evoke strong visuals.
Atop A Cake, from their debut album, holds a similar lyrical frustration but is delivered in a very different way. Another disparagement of marriage, Molly’s vocals are relatively passive – resigned maybe – and without listening too closely you could easily find yourself bopping along oblivious to the conflict that exists within. You will still find yourself bopping along after listening closely of course, it’s just that you’ll also be considering the sociological functions of marriage. Or maybe that’s just me.
John: Cake again. Becoming a bit of a theme. I’ve often wondered if Atop A Cake was Molly getting fed up with Archie’s mum taking control of their wedding, and whether What’s it got to do with you? What’s it got to do with me? is the voice of one person or two. Some people get concerned about the environment or world peace; me, I’m just worried what might happen if there is another row.
What also worried me when I first went to see Alvvays in concert was whether they would play Hey, not least because Ruby really wasn’t that fond of it and I wondered if I was missing something. In actual fact, I reckon if anyone was missing something it was Ruby, because Hey, from the second album Antisocialites was at one point threatening to claim top spot in my chart of favourite Alvvays songs. It might be the prolonged bass intro, or that it sounds like sixteen different songs all at once, or maybe it’s the wry self-deprecating nod to Molly Mayhem. It’s not though. The bit that gets me is the final, fluid release following bars and bars of staccato. They opened the gig with it, too, so I reckon I win.
Ruby: I was definitely missing something when it came to Hey, but whatever it was I seem to have since found it. Hey wasn’t quite what I was looking for musically when I was a student, slowly branching out from the emo bubble (I won’t call it a phase because it was NOT one) to enjoy slightly more pop-y sounds. Now that I’m a bit older and have reconciled my battling musical tastes, the few Alvvays songs that did not make it into my playlists back then have been welcomed into my library. It actually felt a bit like getting some new music when there hadn’t been any for a while!
When Alvvays did finally release Blue Rev five (long) years after Antisocialites, weeks of my commute into work went by before I was willing to listen to anything else. I’ve often been able to remember the exact moment a song has clicked for me, and Tom Verlaine clicked at the bottom of an escalator in Embankment tube station. I did have to google who Tom Verlaine was, but I had heard of Television at least. It’s one of my favourites on the album, although that’s not a credible opinion because I would say that for every song on there.
John: I didn’t have to use a search engine to find out who Tom Verlaine was. Indeed, search engines like AltaVista, Excite and Lycos weren’t around when I first encountered Tom Verlaine. I had to rely on the Family Cat single of the same name back in 1989 to learn who he was, at a time when Television had, for the vast majority of my seventeen-year existence at that point, meant ‘that thing with black and white moving pictures in the corner of the room’. That single was great; so too is the Alvvays song, which is one we didn’t have to argue about for its inclusion.
Meanwhile, Saved By A Waif might have had a bit of discussion. I can’t remember. I’ve slept since then. I’d been aware of this song for ages before the album came out, largely down to YouTube videos. However, none of them prepared me for the initial shock of wondering why that song I really liked called ˈCut Your Hairˈ wasn’t on the album. It’s not easy being a bit dim, but I manage to pull it off more often than you might think. That aside, you should listen to the song, because, well, it’s just Alvvays doing what they do best: catchy pop with singalong chorus, pauses, bursts of energy and a suggestion that we might confuse something with Toronto’s hippies.
Ruby: Over the course of writing this Toppermost, ping-ponging messages of “your turn”, “over to you” and “updated Alvvays” back and forth, I have imported my entire Spotify streaming history onto Last.fm. Saved By A Waif is my joint-14th most played Alvvays track. While it didn’t feature in my personal top 10, I can’t say it doesn’t deserve its place here. It perhaps says quite a lot about my sweet tooth that I’ve always heard the final line as “saved by a waif and the weight of your wafers” (it’s Wayfarers!), but it says something about Alvvays’ often-playful lyricism that I didn’t even question it.
The Agency Group feels a fitting closer for our Toppermost. It is to me classic Alvvays. A snapshot of the Real World, a guitar solo, a sense of something I don’t know that I can describe – apathy, resignation? I’m realising that it’s the presence of reality and the everyday in Alvvays’ catalogue that has kept me listening all these years.
John: Reality, yes … perhaps that’s where the key to Alvvays’ success lies. They write songs about things that most people can relate to, but not in the banal way the songwriters behind Tina Turner’s The Best might have chosen … The Agency Group is exactly one of those relatable songs, the last throes of a relationship between two people thrown together because it’s easier to be so than not, and was one of the tracks that cemented my commitment to the cause on the first album.
So, it falls to me to wrap up this Toppermost, and now you’ve had a sample of the many exquisite desserts on this trolley, I invite you to return to Alvvays soon. Perhaps you will find a Bread and Butter Pudding to your satisfaction, possibly in the shape of one of the songs that made our long list but not the final ten. Or possibly, hopefully even, in the form of a fourth album which, at the time of writing, still appears to be awaiting ingredients.
Alvvays (pronounced Always) is based in Toronto with three albums released to date: Alvvays (2014), Antisocialites (2017), Blue Rev (2022). The current lineup is Molly Rankin (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Kerri MacLellan (keyboards), Alec O’Hanley (lead guitar), Sheridan Riley (drums).
John Hartley is a musician, author and poet of varying quality and success. He is the author of the official biography of the band BOB, and The Broken Bottle trilogy. You can find out more about his writing at John Hartley (Writer) and investigate his music at Broken Down Records. He is also on BlueSky as @JohnyNocash.bsky.social
Ruby Hartley is an illustrator and animator, operating as RubyGoesBananas. You can find her on Instagram, Etsy and YouTube.
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