‘Marry Me, Archie’: How Alvvays crafted a pivotal indie masterpiece
Usually, a music video shot using grainy, lo-fi aesthetics evokes wistfulness and nostalgia, connotations of unburdened youth, and desires for purity. In the music video for ‘Marry Me, Archie’, Alvvays‘ Molly Rankin is initially shown wearing a wedding dress, but a certain perturbation leaves the singer ditching romance for realism, demonstrating that even the grittiest of visions can be playful and critical.
Indie artists know young love well—a lot of their music is grounded in such experiences, showing how the perils of youth can leave a lasting impact well into adulthood. ‘Marry Me, Archie’ sums this up in just over three minutes. However, calling it a simple love story seems entirely reductive when considering the dichotomy lurking at the centre of the song’s underlying melancholic core.
When we talk about indie music, we often focus on how it borrows from earlier rock iterations and rarely on the complexities or paradoxical nature of its themes. While love and romance are common threads across all genres, indie music, especially during the revival of the 2000s, emphasises the cynicism of these experiences without detracting from the beauty of genuine love.
‘Marry Me, Archie’ is truly a heartwarming piece, characterised by its romantic sentiment and Rankin’s captivating vocals. It culminates in a sound that could easily soundtrack a climactic reunion in a coming-of-age indie movie. Alvvays has always excelled at crafting indie-leaning, mesmerising arrangements, and this debut single perfectly captures everything they set out to achieve.
However, ‘Marry Me, Archie’ is far more than just a simple tune about youthful fantasy. It is a romantic song laced with satire, offering a perplexing blend of ambivalence and dissonance. This complexity likely stems from Rankin’s own experiences with loss and tragedy, as well as the pressures she faced while dating in her early adult life.
For context, Rankin’s ancestry is rooted in the traditions and customs of Scottish immigrants who settled on Cape Breton Island. Her father, John Morris Rankin, was a musical arranger for a popular folk band in the 1990s but tragically passed away in 2000 when his car veered off course and crashed into the sea. Rankin first wrote ‘Marry Me, Archie’ after Alvvays had relocated to Toronto, at a time when many of her friends were following traditional life paths like marriage. This, combined with her own experiences with loss, formed the basis of the song’s narrative.
Unsure about whether she wanted to succumb to the pressures of marriage, Rankin’s lyrics also poke fun at conventional decision-making despite her own rich experiences with love and romance. She wastes no time expressing this sentiment, singing in the opening lines: “You’ve expressed explicitly your contempt for matrimony / You’ve student loans to pay, and will not risk the alimony.”
In keeping with one of the most endearing aspects of modern indie music, this is where ‘Marry Me, Archie’ thrives the most: instead of solely discussing her love for the subject at hand, she delves into the various aspects of conventional relationship patterns that don’t entirely feel suited to her while reassuring that this doesn’t in any way lessen her actual feelings.
At the same time, her approach isn’t entirely abstract: many of the lyrics draw from real events that happened around this time. For instance, she references staying indoors during a blizzard with Alec O’Hanley, which resulted in them becoming “content inside a bubble”. For someone like Rankin, who had lost a parent years earlier, the feeling of closeness and comfort can often be felt more acutely than by those without such experiences of loss, making the entire sentiment feel bittersweet.
Although the song then enters an even more intense level of criticism about becoming bound together by law and the stress of “invitations, floral arrangements and breadmakers”, the presence of Rankin’s father almost feels like a consistent factor, despite the song not directly addressing this at all. The song’s overriding appeal is its romanticism, but the nuances of loss and scepticism lurk at the corners, perfectly keeping with indie music’s overall emphasis on authenticity and self-reflection.
What makes this song so profound, however, is that it maintains its lighthearted feel, even though such notable realism has been injected throughout. Perhaps that’s what makes this the perfect indie song; Rankin’s voice and her lyrics appear almost entirely dreamlike and telling of someone experiencing modern love, but, like a true auteur, Rankin’s signature touches are sprinkled throughout, making for an even more delectable and textured listen.
