Molly Rankin’s group is known for emotional and melodic sophistication. Talking about its latest LP, “Blue Rev,” she reflected on how her family’s deep musical history led her there.
When Molly Rankin was a child, she discovered she had some special powers. As a scion of the Rankin Family, the award-winning ’90s Canadian musical group, she adopted as her instrument of choice the fiddle, which her father, John Morris Rankin, also played.
“If you play the fiddle, you’re sort of like a Jedi — you have this aura around you,” she said in an interview from her Toronto apartment, a Devo poster and a wall of guitars visible behind her. “And I was, you know, exhibiting signs of the Force at a young age, and encouraged to not squander that.”
In 2011, she founded Alvvays, an indie-rock band that wraps fuzzy layers of rock instrumentation around stories of hard lives and hurt feelings. It may not seem connected to her roots, but Rankin, 35, noted that the music of her forbears emerged from Celtic melodies passed down for centuries. “They stand the test of time,” she said, “and they bounce around in your head forever.”
From the 2014 release of its self-titled debut LP, Alvvays demonstrated an emotional and melodic sophistication that helped it stand out from its peers. “Antisocialites,” from 2017, was shortlisted for the prestigious Polaris Music Prize and led to the band’s U.S. television debut. Their anticipated third album, “Blue Rev,” out on Friday, was partly delayed by the pandemic but ultimately enriched by additional time.
“Sometimes I feel like every song I write is the last one,” Rankin said, with a small grin. “I wouldn’t call that a process; I would probably call that a personality.”
The slower pace benefited the band’s thoughtfulness about its own work, and its tightly woven bonds. Rankin lives with her partner, Alec O’Hanley, who co-writes the band’s songs and plays a slew of instruments. When we spoke in late September, the band’s drummer, Sheridan Riley, and its bassist, Abbey Blackwell, were staying in an apartment upstairs; Rankin’s childhood friend Kerri MacLellan, who plays keyboards and sings, is just a short bike ride away. O’Hanley compared the home’s current vibe to “Animal House”: “We’re quite clannish in that regard, but it’s not deliberate — it just seems to shake out that way.”
“Blue Rev” pushes the band’s sound toward dreamier and noisier frontiers, while deepening its narrative-driven songwriting. The album takes its name from a Canadian alcoholic beverage Rankin drank as a teenager, which is not enjoyed for its taste.
“I like to offset something pretty with something challenging,” Rankin explained. “I love melodies that can be sweet, but I do love when there’s some grit — a little bit of emotional weight and pain, just to make it feel complete.” She added that she was “constantly trying to make the guitars louder,” and cited Alice Munro’s short stories as a recent inspiration. “I love that she has the ability to knock the wind out of you with a 12-page short story, and you’re just left reeling,” she said. “I would love to be able to do that with a song.”
The producer Shawn Everett (the War on Drugs, the Killers) helped the band break out of some old habits and refine the loud-quiet-loud dynamics in its songs. “We’re always looking to broaden spectrums, whether they’re emotional or tonal — see how far we can push something before it breaks,” O’Hanley said, referencing records by Neil Young, the Psychedelic Furs, Abba, the Cure and the Magnetic Fields as sonic goal posts. He said the band members spent a lot of time gathering unconventional influences from across pop culture, as though they were “ascending Nerd Mountain.” (Though the band is known for sober subject matter, in conversation, its members displayed a sharp wit.)
The single “Belinda Says” began with Rankin messing around with chords in the basement, and lyrics that describe leaving town for an uncertain future — “Moving to the country/Gonna have this baby/See how it goes/See how it grows” — took shape. O’Hanley came up with the line that gives the song its title, which references the 1987 Belinda Carlisle hit “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” O’Hanley had heard “Belinda Says” as a country song, referencing work by Lucinda Williams and Deana Carter, but said that Rankin was “quite insistent on the need for some scuzz.” The resulting track encapsulates the band’s strengths: plaintive and distinct lyrics, keening melodies, waves and waves of sugar-flecked white noise that envelop without overwhelming, a triumphant guitar solo that hoists the song toward an ascendant climax.
On “Blue Rev,” some of the personal pain powering the music is more explicit. John Morris Rankin died in a car accident in 2000, at the age of 40. A photograph of Rankin’s family appears on the album’s cover, which she suggested held a deeper meaning: “It’s the comfort of your parents, and they’re helping you climb onto a wharf, and then behind them is this big, ominous sky of adulthood and what the world is ready to show you.”
Rankin said that when her father died, “It was a really chaotic time and obviously traumatic, but I also had brain fog for a long time,” noting she was too young to grasp all of the emotions and thoughts that accompany a parent’s death. Though she continued playing the fiddle, and even performed with the Rankin Family on a reunion tour, she eventually chose to forge her own path.
Despite the sonic differences, Rankin said she channels her father’s drive. “I’m not afraid to say if I don’t like something or if something isn’t good enough,” she explained. “It’s really important to me, to not be a yes person. He certainly wasn’t one.”
Everett, who was born in Canada but currently lives in Los Angeles, said he hears the Rankin Family’s legacy in Alvvays. “There’s a Northern Lights spirituality you feel growing up in Canada — the miracle of the snow, the weird difference in reality,” he said. “It’s a kind of ethereal question mark that Molly has the ability to weave.”
Damian Abraham, the frontman for the Canadian hardcore band F____ Up, recalled bringing Alvvays on tour as a supporting act in 2014, and said its poise and maturity were already evident. “They had this naïve brilliance you want from a band making pop music with a punk approach,” he said. “They had real music chops in the background, but there was an edge to it that we all gravitated toward.”
Alvvays moved on to headlining its own shows, and accumulating a small, though loyal, fan base. “I don’t know if Alvvays will ever be more than a cult favorite,” O’Hanley said. “We just want to continue on this pop-art beauty quest for as long as we can; if I can have a job playing music and good songs, then that’s great. I don’t have to work in a poutine bar in Toronto.”
Rankin said she could be “pretty hard” on herself, and that it takes a long time to collect material that moves her, but it’s all worth it when the music feels right and resonates. “I’m not expecting a specific trajectory,” she added, with a small laugh. Even a Jedi can’t predict the future.
Source: Music - nytimes.com
