Alvvays will be dropping their new album Blue Rev via Polyvinyl Records this Friday. Over the last few months the Toronto band have released singles “Easy On Your Own?,” “Pharmacist,” “Very Online Guy,” and “Belinda Says” to widespread critical acclaim from critics and fans alike. 

Today, they shared another track from the album “After The Earthquake,” an instant Alvvays classic with soaring guitars and the hypnotic build the band is famous for. The song, which was inspired by Haruki Murakami’s After the Quake, comes complete with a Murder, She Wrote reference, and harkens back to the jangle pop influences of their self-titled debut. The band describes the song as “a rapid fire recital of drive-thru breakdown, tectonic breakup and boyfriend in a coma brake failure.”

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.

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