The dreampop style evokes headphones-on, lying-on-the-bedroom-floor rock — floating away from (or into) troubles, awash in shimmering guitars and hushed vocals. But Canadian quintet Alvvays proved they’re much greater than studio wiz-kids throughout a pair of reveals at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on Tuesday and Wednesday, co-headlining with veteran indie rocker Alex G.
Singer/guitarist Molly Rankin is the pulsing coronary heart of Alvvays, her voice highly effective and clear by way of her hook-filled songs of melancholy. While her unexpectedly highly effective voice and guitar work can typically get misplaced within the shiny mixture of their information, it’s on the forefront of their reside reveals. Keyboard participant Kerri MacLellan and guitarist Alec O’Hanley added loads of texture, a vital tactic for an outside present the place sound can actually get misplaced within the wind.
Alvvays’ reside present additionally permits the chance for his or her songwriting to sound differentiated and singular. While their good 2022 album “Blue Rev” is sequenced in a strategy to hold the vibe going, by switching up the observe order and including songs from their earlier two albums for the set, they had been capable of leap round from the Smiths-y guitars of “After the Earthquake” to the massive synths of “Tile by Tile,” and from the experimental vocals of “Very Online Guy” to the singalong “Archie, Marry Me.”
The group’s music doesn’t actually lend itself to rocking out, however the viewers adored them — there have been a number of Phoebe Bridgers t-shirts noticed within the crowd — and so they clearly received over new followers with the one-two punch of set-enders “Dreams Tonite” and “Easy on Your Own?” Those craving singalongs floated on the cool night air, because the voices of followers rose to fulfill Rankin.
On an identical notice, indie vet Alex G’s albums, notably his early ones, typically have a chill, bed room vibe, which makes the muscular sound of his ace three-piece backing band an unexpectedly rocking shock. That’s to not say they had been channeling AC/DC, however the band’s spectacular energy and tightness lifted the vitality of most of the songs significantly, particularly the extra low-key tracks from his newest album, 2022’s “God Save the Animals.”
True to the ethos of the prolonged indie-rock neighborhood each acts got here from, it is a co-headlining tour of the Northeast, and for these two opening nights, they switched locations within the lineup — however irrespective of which act went first, it’s a satisfying night time with two artists whose sound enhances and by no means overshadows one another. It wraps in Buffalo on Sept. 1.
