Alvvays showed great promise with their first album. Last month, they fulfilled it with their second.





By Rory Jones





Antisocialites, Toronto-based band Alvvays' second record is in many ways the ideal follow-up album to an unexpectedly successful debut. It builds on the bands previously displayed strengths while flexing some new ones. Compelling as ever, the subjects of Molly Rankin's songs find their narrative footing in the skeevy details. They talk, drink, and clash with one another in the same ways that characters in any other convincing piece of fiction might. On Saved by a Waif, Molly gets one of her best lines on an album that's full of them:





"Mommy wants you to be a doctor,

So she can tell her friends you’re like your father,

And if it’s all for the sake of conversation,

Then maybe you should try a new vocation,

Oh, saved by a waif and the weight of your wayfarers."





Antisocialites was not a rushed album. It's been some three years since their eponymous LP; no small stretch of time in a harebrained listening climate where it is often perilously easy to be forgotten by listeners and industry alike. Rather than pulling the trigger prematurely and risking a hastily prepared sophomore slump, Alvvays toured, amassed a bank of new songs, and lived their lives until the time felt right to record a worthy follow-up. It's also worth noting that years spent playing a succession of globetrotting tours have honed the groups already accomplished playing, resulting in a record that bristles with well-practiced, jangle-pop confidence.





With an upcoming show at Mohawk on Tuesday, October 17th, we spoke with Alvvays singer-songwriter Molly Rankin about a run in with a poisonous Texas snake, the bands' love of fanart, keeping momentum, and more.







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Do512: What's your last memory of Austin?





Alvvays: My last memory of Austin is playing at Stubb's with that band CHVRCHES. We went swimming in a river and there was a water basket snake in the river. Is that what you call them?





We call them water moccasins.





Alvvays: Oh, water moccasins. So, [keyboardist] Kerri and I were in the river and we had remarked how great it was that no one else was swimming at that specific time. Everyone else had gotten out of the water, and we said, "Woah, it's so great to have this river all to ourselves!" and then some guy yelled out, 'Get out of the water you idiots, there's a snake!!!' So it was us trapped between the snake and the shore, but he slithered away in a timely fashion.





That's terrifying. They're essentially swimming rattlesnakes.





Alvvays: Yeah. They're bad news, I hear.





Do you have them up in Canada?





Alvvays: No, I think we have a pretty tame snake demographic in Canada. I could be wrong, but definitely where I come from there were no threatening snakes.









Image via GrandStand MEdia





How did the concept for the music video for Dreams Tonite come about? The effect is really convincing.





Alvvays: Oh, thanks for saying that. We have this friend, Matt Johnson, creator of the show, Nirvana The Band The Show; it's very funny. He's done some great films where he inserts himself into archival footage and it's extremely convincing. We had an idea where we wanted to do something with Expo 67 because it was such a beautiful exposition and there was a lot of beautiful footage from the National Film Archive. I think it was Alec's idea to use that footage and Matt's idea on how to approach how to it ought to be done. Usually, they don't come together so seamlessly.





Was this the easiest video to make thus far?





Alvvays: Yeah, usually we're editing until the wee hours of the morning on Alec's computer. This one was a little more like "Here's the idea, can you do this?" and it was just executed really well.





One of the places I saw it discussed was on your subreddit, are y'all aware of that community?





Alvvays: I had heard that we had a subreddit... is it a subreddit or a Reddit sub?





Subreddit.





Alvvays: I know that we have one, I don't think I've ever visited it.





Alvvays - Antisocialites | Out Now





I imagine it might be a little strange to visit it. People obsessing over videos, lyrics, stage banter and that kind of stuff.





Alvvays: Is that all there is on it?





As far as I know, it's a super fan zone.





Alvvays: Oh, that's neat. I feel as though I've learned to not read peoples opinions of me and the things that I make. It's helped me to avert my gaze. Whether it's positive or negative it doesn't seem to be all that helpful.





Has the increased scrutiny of your band affected how you write lyrics?





Alvvays: No, I've always been that way. I like to write about fictional narratives and I think it would be very sad if I altered what I was doing based on an online thread of speculation.





Have you ever experimented with writing short stories, or other kinds of writing that aren't music-based?

Alvvays: I feel like anything I write has to be tethered to music, otherwise it wouldn't be that well done or engaging. I like to read books but I don't think I could ever write one. Or even passable poetry.





Via Alvvays Twitter





Moving on to your Twitter feed, I've noticed you guys retweet a lot of fan art. Does it need to meet a certain standard of quality to get reshared?





Alvvays: (laughs) There are some great interpretations of our faces I've seen out there. It's something we see evokes a positive response with us. We retweet it because we think it's a really neat way to show that you're a fan of a band. I like when people take the time to color things in and interpret the way that you present yourself. It's neat. I like when people have different interpretations of the shapes of my legs and stuff.





It's kind of crazy how many people are inclined to draw Alvvays, as opposed to other bands.

Alvvays: Yeah I find it kind of romantic, the idea of someone by themselves drawing by themselves. It's a really special endeavor and I feel like it warrants attention.





You have a lot of demos left from both of the records, do you have plans to record again soon?

Alvvays: We're busy right now, so it's hard to schedule that. But I know that we won't wait as long as we did the first time. I don't think we'll be touring for three years down the road with this record. That's a roundabout way of answering that question, I know.





It sounds like you're trying to keep the momentum, maybe?





Alvvays: Yeah, for us to exist it has to be perpetual. That's the landscape that we live on now. In order to sustain ourselves, we have to travel and play, so that's what we do.



















