Alvvays, Girl Scout – The O2 Ritz, Manchester (23/6/24)

Sometimes falling in love with a band is a gradual affair and sometimes you can remember the exact point when you decide they are the greatest thing in the world and you struggle to comprehend exactly how you’d got through life without them. From the moment that happened with Alvvays it was inevitable that they’d be my band of 2024.

I’ll admit I was late to discovering Alvvays, but a now forgotten recommendation at the start of the year made me start digging into their back catalogue. It was the first listen to their third album when they hit me like a bolt of a lightning, or more precisely roughly twenty five minutes into as the chaotic brilliance of Promeranian Spjnster revealed itself to me. As Mollie Rankin’s increasingly unhinged vocals combined with guitarist Alec O’Hanley’s frantic playing to produce a song that teetered on the point of collapse every fifteen seconds or so before resurrecting itself into yet another level of brilliance I knew I’d discovered my new favourite band. Even now, after who knows how many listens, the song sounds as exhilaratingly unpredictable as it did on that first listen, never signposting where it is going next but each move in retrospect feeling like the only possible way to go.

I think I had enough patience to listen to the rest of the album before the inevitable happened and I purchased tickets to see them at the Ritz in Manchester. And whilst I also saw them again later in the year at Way Out West festival (reviewed here) there’s always something special about the first time you see a band, with the night unsurprisingly ending up being crowned my best gig of 2024 (my full end of year review can be found here).

It wasn’t just the brilliance of Alvvays that made it such a memorable evening – support act Girl Scout proved to be a perfect and complimentary opener. Having seen them touring with Coach Party in 2023 I’d remembered them as being slightly twee, but here their sound was more muscular, allowing singer Emma Jansson’s vocals to soar through the venue. I often say you can tell how well a support band has connected with an audience by how many people you can see looking them up on their phones after their set is finished – from my vantage point it felt like every second person was busy googling them. Needless to say, within a couple of days of the show I’d bagged tickets for their 2025 tour (tickets for which can be found here).

So what exactly makes Alvvays such an incredible live band? In terms of stage presence the band come across as professional rather than a riveting watch – you could almost believe that singer Mollie Rankin spent the show trying to imagine the audience weren’t there. And whilst the standard of musicianship was high the tightness of the songs left little room for improvisation away from the original compositions.

The true genius of Alvvays though is that they’ve perfected the art of filling their songs with the most delicious of hook lines, such that the evening was brimming with magical moments of the highest purity. Whether it was the “When you walk away…” from Tom Verlaine, the “Time to let go…” from In Undertow, the “Hey Hey”s from Archie Marry Me or pretty much the entire three minutes and eight seconds of After the Earthquake it felt a celebratory moment was always just around the corner. When a band performs the entirety of their most recent album there is always the danger that they will have to plod through the weaker songs, but such is the strength of Blue Rev there didn’t feel like a moment when the quality dipped.

I always know I’ve been to a great gig when I find I’m still buzzing from it days afterwards, reliving those moments that had made it special. The truth is the previous paragraph could have gone been four times longer picking out the highlights of the evening and it still wouldn’t have done full justice to the show. My only worry at the moment is that with a currently empty tour schedule and having taken five years between their second and third albums it may be a little while before Alvvays venture out on tour again. But I’ll be there when they do.

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Alvvays Performed (thank you to the recipient of the set list who allowed the photo):

(And also Pharmacist and Atop a Cake for the encore)

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Youtube Highlight of the Evening: I’m not sure it’s possible to recreate the pure manical energy of Promerian Spinster in a live environment but the band sure did give it a good try! (Courtesy of Tom Whitham)