But after Rankin released a solo EP, the group of high school friends from Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island formed Alvvays. In 2014 they released their self-titled debut record, and the world has fallen in love. Having made waves at the Glastonbury, FYF and Reading festivals, and successfully toured the US and UK alongside the likes of Belle and Sebastian, Real Estate, and The Decemberists, Alvvays are all set to become huge. Not that they’re desperate for massive fame. “We wouldn’t want that,” says Rankin. “I’d be wearing a wig over my face or something every time I went out. I don’t think that will happen.”
Rankin is actually somewhat bemused by their success. “It’s hilarious for us,” she says. “Though we have worked really hard, we never expected our work to come to anything. Maybe if you expect nothing, things work out.”
Alvvays are noted for their sweet, clean sound awash with waves of melancholy. How would Rankin describe their music? “I just say we are guitar pop. Sometimes I say we are wistful guitar pop,” she says. “I get bogged down with jargon, with all the ways to describe current categories of bands. If you’re crossing the US border then whatever you say sticks. I just say we sound like the Cranberries. It is what it is.”
While she jestingly references the Cranberries, Rankin’s musical influences are little more left of centre. “When I got to age 20 I really got into the Replacements, the Smiths, Camera Obscura, Stereolab. I was consciously trying to influence my music based on stuff I was listening to.”
Things took off for Alvvays when the five moved to Toronto, a decision forced on them by the practicalities of living in such a vast country (Australian regional bands can surely relate). “Toronto’s quite far from where we grew up on the east coast of Canada,” Rankin says. “We had been doing a bunch of shows, and seemed to be driving such a great deal of distance to New Brunswick and Quebec. It would take six months of work just to play a gig to about six weird people. That never panned out so we said, ‘We should probably stop driving.’ Things started changing. We made our only record and that’s when everything started to sound like a band.”
Everyone has their own way of going about creating music. Rankin lets us in on her creative method. “A lot of the time I’ll have a melody and I work on it in my head, push through and develop it. I start with a few words of a story or an image – something I’ve been dreaming of, something I’ve read. I show the song to Alec, I tell him what I’m trying to do, then we decide whether it deserves a few days of scrutiny and effort. If not we throw it away. If so we work on it for a few days and that’s it. I throw stuff at the band and then it’s seeing what sticks after three days.
“It’s a ton of work; we are spending a lot of time writing. I play the guitar and that’s an easy way to create my own ideas by exploring, seeing whatever’s going to come out next. Our last record was a really concentrated effort.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
