The Toronto orchestra Alvvays is betting on optimism, after a pandemic, a flooded basement damaging some of their equipment and the theft of the first demos of this third album entitled Blue Rev. Carried by the candid and magnetic voice of Molly Rankin, these fourteen songs with inspired pop refrains pierce the ambient grayness, recalling the energy and ambition of the best of indie pop rock of the 1990s. We go from one song to the other by puffing out his chest a little more, ready to face the turpitude of the world alongside Alvvays, who turns away just enough from the shoegaze (always present in the sound of the guitars) to invoke the strength of the melodies and contrasts of Pixies, for example in the superb Easy on Your Own? at the beginning of the album and in Velveteena title that will be read as a nod to the classic Velouria (1990) Bostonians. Ambitious, even in the resplendent realization of Shawn Everett (The Killers, The War on Drugs, the recent Yeah Yeah Yeahs), vitaminized and addictive.
