[rayword45]

Day 992: Blue Rev by Alvvays

Once again, I'm unsure if I made this album seem better to myself by having such low expectations or if this album is legitimately quite good after a couple of listens through. I've never disliked this band and always thought they played to their image and audience quite well, but they were never anything super unique and the very same-y mood and tone they had across what seemed like all of their cuts meant I never wanted to listen to more than a few tracks of them within a playlist tops.

This album still has that same general twee mood, but there's a slight bit more variance of tone here, perhaps the smallest bit less reliance on surfy reverb, and what's more? These are actually mostly very catchy, well-written pop tunes. The immediate comparison I would make for another release this year was the mid Beach House album, that was oppressively repetitive and the songwriting felt like an afterthought to the atmosphere, which might work for some things but for indie pop definitely just makes things drag. This album is admittedly less than half as long, but almost every song packs a punch and it never feels like these guys are trying to eschew WRITING SONGS in favor of atmosphere or dreaminess or indie white girl cred or whatever.

Is this amazing? No. Is this the biggest shocker of the year? No, that still has to go to Soccer Mommy for me. Is this a solid album? Yes, very yes.

Best Track: Charles Mingus' nutsack
Rating: 7.5/10