The opening lines of Canadian indie rock five-piece band Alvvays' "Archie, Marry Me" swiftly establishes the fact that lead singer Molly Rankin's lyrical persona is no stranger to modern scepticism towards the institute of marriage:
'You've expressed explicitly your contempt for matrimonyYou've student loans to pay and will not risk the alimony'The band's aesthetic for the song is nevertheless far closer to Camera Obscura's "French Navy" than the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Modern Romance"; Rankin rushes over the multisyllablic obstacles that stand in the way of her old-school romantic aspirations to arrive at the song's catchy, gravity-defying chorus: 'Hey, hey, marry me, Archie'.
As Pitchfork's Stuart Bernan notes, Rankin doesn't seem as concerned with all the bourgeois rituals of marriage (So honey take me by the hand and we can sign some papers/ Forget the invitations floral arrangements and bread makers), as she is in securing the love of a lifetime: "Rankin has got the guy, but not the ring—and yet she already sounds less like she’s fighting for the love of her life than checking items off a list [...] thereby proving that the only thing more tragic than a break-up song is one about a person desperate to break in."
The pining for everlasting romance may be clichéd, and Alvvays' brand of breezy, summer jam-y indie rock and surf pop that relies heavily on reverb-laced guitars and big choruses may not be particularly original - but Rankin's ability to evoke frank longing, desperation, uncertainty, nostalgia, humor and heartache with her optimistic-yet-somewhat-deadpan vocals wins you over anyway. As Consequence of Sound's Philip Cosores observes in his review of Alvvays' self-titled debut album, Rankin's conviction is too infectious to dismiss: "Standing tallest is the very conceit of “Marry Me, Archie”, which takes a hyper-specific subject, gives it a name you never hear, somehow creates a sentiment that almost no one should be able to sing along to with Molly Rankin’s conviction, and sells it with a soaring chorus that makes it challenging to not sing along with that same conviction."
It's not surprising that Rolling Stone ranked the track No. 11 on its list of the 50 Best Songs of 2014: "Three minutes of uncut indie-guitar bliss: Singer Molly Rankin takes the initiative and promises her boy a lifetime of trouble over swirls of hopeful noise, to give us the fuzzy-cardigan "Drunk in Love" we never knew we needed." In an age of widespread cynicism about long term romantic commitments, "Archie, Marry Me" seems like a blast of fresh air from an idealized, sepia-tinted past, when wedding vows were declared with un-ironic conviction.
