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The quintet Alvvays, featuring Cape Bretoners Molly Rankin — daughter of the late Rankin Family pianist/fiddler John Morris Rankin — and her Judique next-door neighbour Kerri MacLellan saw its self-titled debut appear on Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 50 releases of 2014.
The band, which also features P.E.I. musicians Alec O’Hanley, Brian Murphy and Philip MacIsaac, lands at 36 on the list, sandwiched between Jack White tourmate Benjamin Booker at 37 and Lenny Kravitz’s Strut at 35. The magazine called the Alvvays album “a great short-story collection, full of wild romance, quarter-life confusion and sly humour” on songs like Archie, Marry Me (also at #11 on the R.S. top singles list as “three minutes of uncut indie-guitar bliss”) and Party Police.
Alvvays also made Top 50 of 2014 lists at England’s NME, Paste Magazine and Popmatters, and Canadian best-of at Huffington Post and Exclaim! magazine.
The record also topped CBC Music’s 30 Best Canadian Albums of 2014, which also included Hey Rosetta!’s Second Sight at 4, Jenn Grant’s Compostela at 12, Mo Kenney’s In My Dreams at 21 and Cousins’ The Halls of Wickwire at 25.
The band will have to do its celebrating on the road, Alvvays is on a tour of the Prairies and American Midwest, before heading overseas in January for two months of U.K. and European dates that take them all over the continent.
Then the band has one of the hottest opening slots in indie pop, joining the Decemberists’ U.S. dates through March and April. . . . . . . . . . . . .