Beyond the Pale 2024: Alvvays will cross the Atlantic for their first Irish show in more than a decade. Photograph: Eleanor Petry
Excerpt:
There is a question Molly Rankin is asked in every interview, and it has to do with a middle-aged man with tall hair and some strange views. “Every time I talk about this, I feel like I get some people [jumping in]. It’s a very volatile question,” the Canadian musician says as her band, Alvvays, prepare to cross the Atlantic for their first Irish show in more than a decade, at the Beyond the Pale festival.
“I still listen to The Smiths, and I still love them.”
A great many former fans have abandoned The Smiths since Morrissey, the one-time singer of the long-defunct band, began to express bizarre opinions about politics, meat-eaters, the British royals and The Simpsons. But Rankin makes no apologies for steadfastly adoring the songs he wrote with Johnny Marr – an audible influence on Alvvays’ gorgeously bruised and winningly vulnerable alternative pop.
“Two people colliding at a time in their lives when they were bursting with creativity,” is how Rankin describes Morrissey-Marr from her apartment in Toronto. “And, for whatever reason, [it] just working out and then making the albums that they did. I believe in the beauty of collaboration and how fruitful that can be. I hear those songs and no one will take them away from me.”
The Smiths’ career took off in a heartbeat. Things have been more stop-start for Alvvays (pronounced “Always”), a five-piece whose glorious fusion of jangle-pop, dreamy riffs and underdog yearning speaks to the overlapping influence of underground icons such as The Smiths, My Bloody Valentine and Belle and Sebastian...
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/...he-smiths-no-one-will-take-them-away-from-me/
and
https://archive.is/DmBzA
Exclaim! piggybacks on The Irish Times article with a blatantly untrue headline before elaborating harmlessly about Morrissey and The Smiths, and including a Youtube link to an Alvvays song, Pressed, which confirms merits claimed:
https://exclaim.ca/music/article/molly-rankin-of-alvvays-on-loving-the-smiths-but-hating-morrissey
