Alvvays: Molly Rankin and Alec O'Hanley, with Shawn Everett

Are you guys in your own studio space there in Toronto?

Alec O'Hanley: This is the basement of the apartment we've rented for the last 12 years. This is where we jam a bit. Molly and I, with drum machines, namely. We have another little shed that we also rent, which is where we do the loud stuff. We've got our [Tascam] 388 here, but might move it to the shed pretty soon.

Are you doing pre-production and demos there and then stepping out and reimagining things in the studio?

AO: Yeah, we do. It's a continuous flow with the tracking. What is a demo anymore? The continuum isn't as delineated as it once was, because once you start getting a preamp or two, you can start to keep your stuff, and the bones of the demos become the songs. The arrangements, nine times out of ten, are there already. It's rare we have to change tempo or anything like that.

You never know. You play it one time, and it never feels the same again, and that's what it is, whether it's recorded well or not. Sometimes it doesn't even matter as long as the feeling is there.

AO: Totally. And our ineptitude also works against us in that scenario as well, because if we do stumble on something, a better competent engineer could probably get back there, or at least kind of close, but we're just banging rocks together and trying to make fire.

So much great and enduring music was made by A) people that didn't really know what they were doing, or B) with "subpar" gear or guitars, cheap amps, cheap microphones. Sometimes it just doesn't matter as long as the emotional content is there.

Molly Rankin: It's true that people will cast aside fidelity for good ideas or overlook the lackluster quality of something if it's a good song. I do. All the stuff I listen to sounds horrible. [laughter]

For example?

MR: If I were to listen to a Cleaners from Venus song, and I thought about the way it sounded, it would probably be really distracting, but the melodies and the ideas behind it just hypnotize me.

AO: Yeah, yeah. It reads as authenticity a lot of the times, I guess, if you hear something that's audibly weathered and amateur sounding, what you lose in the frequency spectrum, you gain in that realness. I like pristine sounding stuff as much as anyone too, like The Free Design or something. Mind you, that was pristine in '65 or something, so probably, "mid-fi" by today's standards. It's tough to tell what's a demo, and what's a real song with those guys. R. Stevie Moore [Tape Op #84] is another. Just loads of artifacts and tape, and that's the point. All those people had to work [with what they had] and it ends up better for it.

There are a lot of records that have a real homemade bedroom quality to them that feel so much more intimate and personal and like they had the freedom to be themselves, without somebody looking over their shoulder through a piece of glass, or constantly critiquing.

[At this point Shawn Everett joins the call.]

Shawn Everett: Hello.

MR: Shawn!

SE: So sorry I'm late. It's my daughter's first day of school and I woke up at 7:30, but I went to bed at 4:30.

We were just talking about the virtues of capturing emotional content rather than having everything be hi-fi and perfect.

SE: Oh, sweet.

The first thing that I thought of when I put the new Alvvays record [Blue Rev] on, was it reminded me of records that I loved from bands like Ride, The Catherine Wheel, and Lush. A little bit washy, a little bit shimmery, and with great melodies. A little bit of a throwback to different era that I really loved. Isn't there a backstory in terms of what happened before you actually got into the studio together to make this record with Shawn?

MR: We're always writing and demoing and there were a lot of curve balls. We did start to do the record and then the pandemic happened. So,...