Alvvays, the dream-pop noisemakers, are great, but are they any good?

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In the early 1980s, Leonard Cohen was a critically acclaimed songwriter whose recording career was in the dumps. While record-label boss Walter Yetnikoff respected Cohen’s talent, he wanted a hit record: “Leonard,” he said to his brooding artist, “we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good.” Cohen’s art meant little to Yetnikoff if he couldn’t sell it to the public in numbers that mattered.

In 2022, it’s harder to say which numbers matter. Nobody’s buying records in the streaming era. Every artist, band, manager and record label still wants a hit, but what does it say about a lauded pop act who gets by without chart success?

Consider Alvvays, the Toronto quintet whose Blue Rev landed on a number of year-end “best album” lists, including those compiled by tastemakers Pitchfork, Paste and National Public Radio. Led by Nova Scotia-born singer-songwriter Molly Rankin, the dream-pop noisemakers have long been favoured by the underground press. Now the established media has joined the party. Esquire magazine hailed the band’s third album as “enormously charming,” while the Guardian described it as “devastatingly elegant.”

These are sparkling adverbs and adjectives for the press clippings, but all this acclaim for a band with little commercial success raises the question: We know Alvvays is great, but is it any good?

On Thursday, the band played the first of two shows at Toronto’s History club to a college-radio crowd excited to be there. The concert opened with Pharmacist, the lead track to Blue Rev. It is as good an introduction to Alvvays as any, all guitar-wall squall, casual melody and lamenting lyrics. Rankin’s flat voice seems barely committed to the song, and yet it rises above the haze. “It’s all right, I know I never crossed your mind,” she sings, offhandedly and quietly crushing.

Heads bopped in the audience – in commiseration and to the beat. Later, when introducing Very Online Guy, Rankin asked whether any of those online guys were in the room, before letting them know, “I see you, I’m here with you.” Those seven words could be the band’s slogan.

Alvvays, who first gained notice in 2014 with its sardonic single, Marry Me, Archie, isn’t pop-radio friendly: Choruses are not aggressively hooky – the listener’s ears are caught coyly. The band’s unpolished sound is a mix of brooding new wave from the eighties, extroverted fuzz-pop from the ‘90s and introverted shoegaze from the 2000s. There’s something about Many Mirrors that always reminds me of a 1983 hit by Naked Eyes.

Rankin does not sing in a big way, and yet she is plainly heard through the churning rhythm and the sheet of jangled distortion she and her bandmates construct. Lyrically, there is frustration, fear and concern. Wondering about weekends alone, Rankin asks, “Does it get easier on your own?” And on Belinda Says, this: “I find myself paralyzed/ Knowing all too well, terrified/ But I’ll find my way.”

A voice in the eye of the storm, Alvvays speaks to and for a worried generation with its bittersweet observations about young adulthood. “I hear you singing,” Rankin let the audience know at History. It goes without saying that the feelings are mutual.

In June, Alvvays will play the blockbuster Primavera Sound festival in Spain, along with Kendrick Lamar, Rosalia, Depeche Mode, Halsey, Calvin Harris, Pet Shop Boys and a reunited Blur. It is a step up in class for a band that has held its buzz despite going five years without a new LP before Blue Rev, and despite never having an album or a single that burned up the mainstream charts.

Despite all its applause, it is doubtful Alvvays makes a lot of money. A hit would help the bottom line, but the band doesn’t seem to be willing to sell its soul to chase it. Alvvays is great at some things, and not so good at others.