After a hiatus of three years, Alvvays is back with their new album, titled Antisocialites. Containing a much more elevated production value than their 2014 release, Alvvays manage to produce an incredibly polished and clean sounding indie pop album.
Alvvays' 2014 S/T was a cute and warm summer excursion. The album itself is rather immature, with much of the songwriting and structures being essentially the same. This makes it, despite having interesting layers at points, sound very similar throughout. Overall, this all comes together to create an album that is entirely inoffensive and safe; just very solid indie pop. Not necessarily a bad thing in itself.
Still, as incredibly twee and jangly as their 2014 S/T, Antisocialites derives heavy inspirations from bands such as Belle & Sebastian, Heavenly, Tiger Trap, and The Field Mice. Molly Rankin's energetic vocals capture hooks and melodies perfectly, often including subtle complexities that entirely make the song. Furthermore, the songwriting and structures are much better on Antisocialites, with songs building up, breaking down, and climaxing much more intelligently than on their S/T.
Overall, the album is quite upbeat, treading on an almost twee/jangle punk type sound. Some of the best songs include "Dreams Tonite", "Lollipop (Ode To Jim)", and "Saved By A Waif". "Dreams Tonite" is a shoegaze sounding song that's quite lethargic and haunting, floating by as if on shimmering clouds. "Lollipop", on the other hand, sounds just like its title: an overly sugary sweet song that's irresistibly cute with a genius echoing chorus."Saved By A Waif", just like "Lollipop", has a genius chorus that whizzes around the listener in nostalgic and chaotic glee.
Mixed with these upbeat songs are more lyrically solemn ones such as "Your Type" and "Already Gone", about failures in relationships and death, respectively. In this way Alvvays creates an album much like The Smiths would, containing happy, upbeat, instrumentation mixed with depressing lyrics. Furthermore like The Smiths, Rankin channels Morrissey's satirically melodramatic personality in love and life in general.
Antisocialites is as good if not better than their S/T. Much more complex and mature than their debut, Antisocialites is still a near perfect, bittersweet, pop album. Though some fun may have been left behind with the S/T'S warm naivety, Antisocialites makes up for it in a more technically and emotionally complex album that almost makes Rankins seem like a new age female Morrissey. Maybe.
