Alvvays announced they are co-headlining with Alex G, did you miss it?
After releasing their critically acclaimed, instant-classic album Blue Rev, Alvvays announced a co-headline tour with fellow indie-rock sensation Alex G for a stacked North American tour. The co-headline run will kick off at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Bandshell and include stops in Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto, and more. Before that, Alvvays will also join Maggie Rogers for a show at the Hollywood Bowl on August 13th. A full rundown of all upcoming tour dates can be found below, and the general on-sale starts this Friday, 3/3, at 10 AM local time.
2023 World Tour Dates:
03/01 - Ottawa, ON @ Bronson Centre $ [SOLD OUT]
03/02 - Ottawa, ON @ Bronson Centre $ [SOLD OUT]
03/03 - Montreal, QC @ MTELUS $
03/04 - London, ON @ London Music Hall $
03/05 - Detroit, MI @ Majestic $ [SOLD OUT]
03/08 - Winnipeg, MB @ Burton Cummings Theatre #
03/09 - Saskatoon, SK @ Coors Event Centre #
03/10 - Edmonton, AB @ Midway #
03/11 - Calgary, AB @ MacEwan Hall #
03/13 - Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory $
03/15 - Victoria, BC @ Capital Ballroom # [SOLD OUT]
03/16 - Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom # [SOLD OUT]
03/17 - Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom # [SOLD OUT]
05/24 - London, UK @ Forum &
05/25 - London, UK @ Forum &
05/26 - Derbyshire, UK @ Bearded Theory Festival
05/27 - Bristol, UK @ Dot To Dot Festival
05/28 - Nottingham, UK @ Dot To Dot Festival
05/30 - Manchester, UK @ New Century & [SOLD OUT]
05/31 - Glasgow, UK @ Galvanizers & [SOLD OUT]
06/02 - Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Sound
06/04 - Paris, France @ Trabendo & [SOLD OUT]
06/05 - Brussels, Belgium @ Botanique & [SOLD OUT]
06/06 - Berlin, Germany @ Astra Kulturhaus &
06/08 - Porto, Portugal @ Primavera Sound
06/09 - Madrid, Spain @ Primavera Sound
6/9-6/11 - Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands @ Best Kept Secret Festival
07/28 - Omaha, NE @ Maha Festival
08/13 - Hollywood Bowl @ Los Angeles, CA ^
08/23 - Brooklyn NY @ Prospect Park *
08/25 - Boston, MA @ Leader Bank Pavilion *
08/26 - Philadelphia, PA @ Dell Center *
08/27 - Martha's Vineyard, MA @ Beach Road Festival
08/28 - Toronto, ON @ The Budweiser Stage *
08/30 - Detroit, MI @ Royal Oak *
08/31 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE *
09/01 - Buffalo, NY @ Art Park *
$ w/ Disq
# w/ Big Rig
& w/ Ex-Vöid
^ w/ Maggie Rogers
* co-headline date w/ Alex G
The band recently released their KEXP live session and this excellent cover of Jane Wiedlin’s “Rush Hour” for Sirius XMU.
The band received an onslaught of attention on 2022 Year-End lists, including “Belinda Says” being named the #1 song of the year by Pitchfork, #1 on Stereogum’s official and reader’s poll album of the year lists, and they took the #1 spot on FLOOD Magazine, Good Morning America, and Exclaim’s lists as well. The Canadian quintet kicked off 2023 with their late night TV debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Performing “Belinda Says” the band ripped through the beloved song accompanied by a string trio proving 2023 will be the year of Alvvays domination.
More on Blue Rev…
Alvvays never intended to take five years to finish their third album. This nervy joyride is the compulsively lovable Blue Rev.; the band began writing and cutting its first bits soon after releasing 2017’s Antisocialites, that stunning sophomore record that confirmed the Toronto quintet’s status atop a new generation of winning and whip-smart indie rock.
Global lockdowns notwithstanding, circumstances both ordinary and entirely unpredictable stunted those sessions. Alvvays toured more than expected, a surefire interruption for a band that doesn’t write on the road. A watchful thief broke into singer Molly Rankin’s apartment and swiped a recorder full of demos one day before a basement flood nearly ruined all the band’s gear. Due to border closures, they lost a rhythm section and couldn’t rehearse for months with their masterful new one, drummer Sheridan Riley and bassist Abbey Blackwell.
The songs of Blue Rev thrive on immediacy and intricacy, so good on first listen that the subsequent spins where you hear all the details are an inevitability. This perfectly dovetailed sound stems from an unorthodox—and, for Alvvays, wholly surprising—recording process, unlike anything they’ve ever done. Alvvays are fans of fastidious demos, making maps of new tunes so complete they might as well have topographical contour lines.
But in October 2021, when they arrived at a Los Angeles studio with fellow Canadian Shawn Everett, he urged them to forget the careful planning they’d done and play the stuff, straight to tape. On the second day, they ripped through Blue Rev front-to-back twice, pausing only 15 seconds between songs and only 30 minutes between full album takes. And then, as Everett has done on recent albums by The War on Drugs and Kacey Musgraves, he spent an obsessive amount of time alongside Alvvays filling in the cracks, roughing up the surfaces, and mixing the
results.
Every element of Alvvays leveled up in the long interim between albums: Riley is a classic dynamo of a drummer, with the power of a rock deity and the finesse of a jazz pedigree. Their roommate, in-demand bassist Blackwell, finds and entrenches the song's center. Keyboardist Kerri MacLellan joined Rankin and guitarist Alec O’Hanley to write more this time, reinforcing the band’s collective quest to break patterns heard on their first two albums.
Alvvays’ self-titled debut, released when much of the band was still in its early 20s, offered speculation about a distant future—marriage, professionalism, interplanetary citizenship. Antisocialites wrestled with the woes of the now, especially the anxieties of inching toward adulthood. Named for the sugary alcoholic beverage Rankin and MacLellan used to drink as teens in rural Cape Breton, Blue Rev looks both back at that country's past and forward at an uncertain world, reckoning with what we lose whenever we choose what we want to become.
Sure, it arrives a few years later than expected. Still, the answer for Alvvays is simple: They’ve changed gradually, growing on Blue Rev into one of their generation’s most complete and riveting rock bands.
