"Anytime we get to the UK and elsewhere - like even Scandinavia, we've not been to on this album yet - it sort of feels feels like home in a way," says Molly Rankine, lead singer of Alvvays.

"There are always, always these different, like, common interests and phrases that my grandmother would say, or weird things that people eat from where I'm from that you find in the UK and it's heart-warming. Although you're out of your element, you still feel like there's some type of connection."

That's perhaps no surprise for Rankin, whose father, John Morris Rankin, was a fiddler in the Celtic collective The Rankin Family, who formed playing ceilidhs to entertain neighbours in Nova Scotia.


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Alvvays themselves have been compared to Scottish indie luminaries Camera Obscura and Teenage Fanclub, and are hoping to get a chance to explore when they visit for their Glasgow show on June 24.

Rankin says: "Glasgow is fun. Hopefully we get a little bit of time to rip around the city. I feel like it's always so truncated, so we're hoping to explore a little bit more.

"Normally we think we have a whole day in some place, but then there are all of these hilarious snafus that show up and and you end up just getting in really late.

"But now that we're on a bus, we get to kind of wake up where we're playing, which is really rare for us. Normally, we're in the Travelodge.

"The weather will be nice for a change! Normally, I feel like we're there in late fall and winter. So this time we're ready for Glaswegian summer."

Molly Rankine of Alvvays

Alvvays' latest album, Blue Rev, went top 40 in the UK and has been greeted with acclaim by critics.

Pitchfork called it the third best album of 2022, with the New York Times, The Guardian and Rolling Stone also including it on their year-end lists.

Rankin says: "We're just happy that we can keep making music. I was very surprised when we returned that people would actually be interested – my bar is so low! Just for people to be showing up at these shows, it's all gravy to me."

While Blue Rev is arguably their critical and commercial high point so far, fans can be assured old favourites will not be ignored on the setlist.

Rankin explains: "We’re trying to create a little bit more of a companion spectacle, along with the music and just trying new textures and video and all this different cool experimental stuff that we've been working at for a while.

"Alec (Hanley, lead guitar) is there now continuing to hone that. So I'm excited to see how everything develops in that field.

"There should be different things here and there and obviously we want to mix up what we're playing and bring in certain things we have done in the past and make sure that we're not just hammering people over the head with our new record.

We try our best to do a smattering of the past, and then we're all really enjoying playing the new stuff. We spent so much time building it leading up to the release in rehearsal, kind of like a sonic boot camp of getting all the layers and textures in there, so now that we've figured it all out we still want to play a lot of those songs, but I don't want to ignore the things that people are coming through the door for to begin with.

"I don't like when bands leave all that stuff behind."

Alvvays will play Glasgow's 02 Academy on June 24. Tickets are available here.