Who Would Expect Crazy Crowds At An Alvvays Shows?

"Sometimes, for whatever reason, shows can just get really rowdy," says Molly Rankin, the 27-year-old leader of Canadian indie-pop outfit Alvvays. With Rankin's honey-sweet voice and the band's penchant for jangling guitars, they hardly seem like the most likely rock band to start a riot. But since the release of their debut self-titled LP in 2014, the quintet have attracted an ardent, occasionally out-of-control following.

"Suddenly they're there in your space, and you kind of want to ask them: 'Ok, you're up here with the band, now what're you going to do?'"

"It can be confronting for us," Rankin offers. "People just jump up on stage, and suddenly they're there in your space, and you kind of want to ask them: 'Ok, you're up here with the band, now what're you going to do?' We played a show in [New Brunswick], a girl got up on stage and tried to rip our Alvvays flag off the wall. Our drummer had to fight her for the flag in front of the whole audience. My mom's first cousin was there, and she'd never seen our band before, and I think she was completely mortified by how barbaric the situation was. It was just one of those DIY shows at a college, so there are obviously no security measures, because who would expect you'd need them with a band like us?

"But maybe we do. Like, we played another rowdy show in Austria. And, get this, my mom's cousin was at that show, too. Somehow she was both at this one show on the east coast of Canada, and at this other show in Austria, and both times things got crazy. This time a guy climbed up on stage, did a backflip off the monitors, and crashed into the crowd. I could feel her disapproving gaze! Like, my mom was going to hear all about this."

The 'Alvvays flag' that Rankin speaks of comes from the video for their perfect jangle-pop single, Archie, Marry Me. Allison Johnston, who co-directed the video and shot the super-8 footage of the band sailing, painted the flag to flutter from the boat. Even though the band hail from islands in the Canadian Maritimes — Rankin and keyboardist Kerri MacLellan from tiny Cape Breton, guitarist Alec O'Hanley, bassist Brian Murphy, and drummer Phil MacIsaac from Prince Edward Island — sailboats weren't a part of their childhood.

"Maybe the boys did some sailing where they grew up, but where Kerri and I are from, it's more of a fishing town. People there associate sailing with wealth, so I don't think anyone dares to sail," Rankin says. "There was a little more civilisation for the boys than where Kerri and I grew up. It was a real small town, we were pretty much the only two families living on the dirt road we grew up on. We had no mall, no movie theatre. It was just a grocery store and a gas station. And if you could see the grocery store, you would probably fear for our wellbeing. There wasn't much to do. We derived a great deal of entertainment from spending a lot of time in the woods, from trying to conquer boredom. We were really into drawing and painting, and both of our families — our parents, our older brothers — owned a whole lot of musical instruments. So, from a really young age, we learned how to play piano and fiddle, and to play them with other people. Music is a huge tradition in Cape Breton, especially through the winter, if only to keep everyone in high spirits during a really bleak time of the year."

"Music is a huge tradition in Cape Breton, especially through the winter, if only to keep everyone in high spirits during a really bleak time of the year."

Rankin was born into that tradition. Her father, the late John Morris Rankin, was a member of the Rankin Family, a familial folk act that gathered a sizeable following in the '90s. Molly played fiddle with the band often in her childhood. "There's definitely old videos of me playing folk music as a kid that I try to look back on in a fond way, because, otherwise, that stuff'll just drive you crazy," Rankin says.

From there, she graduated into high school musicals, of which there's also video lurking, destined to one day come to light. "I'm sure videos'll soon start surfacing," Rankin laughs. "But in one of the main productions I was in, I was wearing a fat suit, so it may be a bit hard for people to recognise me. I played Sophie in our high school's production of Mamma Mia, so I ended up learning just a tonne of ABBA songs. That's something I still really love, ABBA. It was one of the most beneficial experiences I had, musically and confidence-wise, growing up, and quite a feat for our tiny little high school."

From there, Rankin began writing her own songs: confessional, folky tunes on acoustic guitar, cutting her teeth playing talent shows and house parties. But, then came a transformative trip to a record store in Halifax, Nova Scotia. "I remember having two black eyes at the time, and going in and buying Grand Prix by Teenage Fanclub, a Replacements record, and Meat Is Murder by The Smiths. All on the same day! It totally opened my mind up, and was a huge turning point for me. I remember spending a lot of time alone, in my apartment, listening to those records — I still really cherish them."

Rankin was living on Prince Edward Island when she first put out a solo EP in 2010, recorded with O'Hanley, but touring behind it she eventually assembled the future Alvvays as her backing band. Performing under her name, Rankin began writing and perform the pop songs — Party Police, Archie, Marry Me — that'd become the band's staples. They changed their name to Alvvays in 2013, moved to Toronto, and unveiled their first single, Adult Diversion. The description on their SoundCloud at the time dubbed their music 'Bandwagonesque-esque'.

"That's something I really bonded with Alec about," Rankin remembers. "We both loved Teenage Fanclub. We were feeding each other all these records, getting excited about writing our own songs. Maybe a little too excited: Archie, Marry Me is totally Everything Flows. Which I know is on Catholic Education, by the way. I think that that was the whole approach I was trying to take when I was writing the song. Luckily, we had enough differences that they don't really sound alike at all. But when I think about writing that song, that's where my brain goes. Because I spent six months on Prince Edward Island obsessing over that song, driving around in my car."

In making their self-titled debut, Alvvays recorded with oddball songwriter Chad VanGaalen, collaborated with Holy Fuck's Graham Walsh, and had long-time indie-rock producer John Agnello mix the record. But, beyond wanting to find a label to release the album in the US (which they did, with Polyvinyl), Alvvays had no great hopes or plans for their first LP. "We never had a goal or a vision of what we were going to do," says Rankin. "And I think that's benefited us. Right now, it's really hard to have expectations, because everything is constantly changing with music. You can still be hopeful, but you have to remain realistic, even when things are going well. We've been able to tour so much with this record, and I feel incredibly lucky that we've been able to do that."