ALBUM OF THE YEAR PICK:
"BLUE REV" BY ALVVAYS
The last time I wrote about Alvvays was in the fall of 2017; I was a Junior in College and they had just released their second album. I was working at the student radio station and wrote a piece for their website. I'm a little out of practice on music writing, but I figure it's mostly just for me anyway. A way to remember who I am at this moment and why my favorite band in my twenties is this one.
I first heard them at the radio station, after my show one night, and was immediately captured. I ran back into the studio to turn up the song and write down some of the lyrics so I could look it up later. It was, unsurprisingly, 'Archie, Marry Me'; their debut single and one of the most listened to in their repertoire. Any fan of indie/alt pop is no stranger to this tune but at the time it was new to me, and I had never heard anything like it before. It felt like a moment out of a film and I was right at the center listening with every fiber; soaking it in. So many times I had felt out-of-place and unsure of where I fit but right then, listening to that song, I felt like someone who was right where they were supposed to be. That was Spring of 2016, and I was 18.
The very next year they released their sophomore album, 'Antisocialites', and I wrote about it having "something tangible, something that makes you want to go on living this life as freely and wildly as possible, with as much feeling as one can muster" (from https://kure.stuorg.iastate.edu/antisocialites-by-alvvays/). I was very emotional because for the first time in my life I had a group of friends and I wasn't used to that much love; I remember feeling it pour over me at times and being overwhelmed by it. The night the album came out was one of those moments; "it was midnight, 'Antisocialites' had just dropped, and I was listening to it alone in my room. It so perfectly captured everything I had wanted it to. I felt that I needed to share it" with people who would get it, and as if on cue "some of my friends walked through the front door". They had all been out to the bars and I couldn't go because I wasn't yet 21; I'd been feeling a bit down about it before I remembered Alvvays' new album was coming out. When they arrived, I had just finished listening to it through a second time, and "we jumped up and down in the hallway". The songs off that album were on every party playlist for the rest of the semester and into the next.
I got lucky, discovering my favourite band and them releasing another album just 18 months later. It was perfect for college; linking up with the moments I wanted to celebrate and remember, for the most part anyway. There was a time during the last year and a half of college when I didn't want to remember how I felt; so I stopped listening. I didn't listen to them for years; from 2019, when I graduated, all through grad school and into my living back at home phase at 23. I couldn't listen because it reminded me so viscerally of heartache and at the time I thought that was the worst there was to feel. Soon after my 24th birthday I learned that was not true. Loss is a different kind of heartache; it isn't about not being good enough for someone, it's not about you at all. There is just nothing there, they're just gone, and along with them everything you admired and wanted to say. This is the worst thing a person can feel; the absence of someone. Nothing makes it stop hurting, but time acts as a buffer.
A year passed and another birthday, I'm 25 now and still living at home. I'm ready to leave, now that I'm feeling a little better. I made friends at the office that I get to see every day and I'm getting back to that feeling I had at the radio station; of belonging and fullness. I miss home though, the place I've always felt the most me; I'm moving back up there in February, to be closer to my college friends and settle in the area I've wanted to live in for years. Another big transition and finally a time I do want to remember again, a time when I'm getting back to myself. And just like thatâŠ
'Blue Rev' finally dropped in October; I'd been waiting with bated breath ever since 'Pharmacist' came out earlier this year, and it did not disappoint. I can't believe I'm saying this because I never thought they'd actually outdo their first two albums, but this is my favorite Alvvays album yet. It is literal perfection and there isn't a bad track on it. They have put out three perfect albums though and I always get this excited, so maybe I'm just biased in the moment and will feel like they are more even later on. It might just be the newness of it, but I honestly don't think so. I think they have been honing their craft, taking their time on this one, even more than the others, and waiting to put it out until they were ready. It always shows, the care these musicians put into their music, and the truth they write about. Their songs are from the heart and they speak to yours. That is why Alvvays is and will always be the soundtrack to my twenties, and maybe thirties and forties, and so on.
Promise me you will give it a chance and I promise you it won't disappoint: Blue Rev
https://www.instagram.com/alvvaysband/