Alvvays - Blue Rev (2022)
Artist: Alvvays
Author: Sarah
Date: 2/7/2025
Listen: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Antisocialites was one of those rare cases where an album had an impossible amount of hype and still managed to surpass it. The general opinion about Blue Rev is that it had an even more impossible amount of hype, and managed to surpass that by even more. And yet it's my least favorite of their albums by a wide margin. Now, why is that?
As I've talked about before, Antisocialites came out at just the right time in my life: in the fall of 2017 I was in the middle of undergrad, at my most sociable, and as a member of the campus radio station I was at my most aware of and interested in what was going on in indie music. On the other hand, fall 2022 saw me in my last semester of grad school, with all my friends gone, and coming up on three years since the last time I was really interested in any new music. Basically, it was the absolute wrong time for me to be getting a new Alvvays album.
As of the time of writing, I've managed to rediscover my love for music and feel less isolated again. I've even found some albums in that covid-era stretch that I really like now! And yet, I still can't really figure out what Blue Rev's selling point is. Their first two albums had songs with hooks so strong that it would be one listen, and you'd be singing the whole album to yourself for a week, but Blue Rev doesn't have any song with a chorus that I could sing an hour later. People always talk about it like it's their shoegaze album, but other than a bit of My Bloody Valentine-esque glide guitar, it really doesn't sound all that different from Antisocialites. Honestly, it sometimes sort of sounds like the band has run out of ideas (for example, "Pressed" is blatantly derivative of the Smiths in a way that makes Antisocialites' Stereolab-worship song "Hey" sound like a subtle nod).