Alvilda

An absolute charmer out last month from French quartet Alvilda. Following on a well-received 7” for Alien Snatch Records, the band offers up a debut that blends power pop, punk, and a curl of New Wave into an album that’s packed with nostalgia, while making it feel fresh. Visions of Chin Chin, Telephone, Dolly Mixture, and Nikki & The Corvettes come together among the assembled fare on C’est Déjà L’heure, but those are ultimately echoes that cascade off of their exuberant pop confections. The band’s greatest asset is atmosphere. They capture the airiness of those outfits. They imbue their songs with the crisp tape-fed freedom of the early days of power pop and punk, the kind that bled the buoyancy of girl group dynamics and ‘60s strums into something a bit more candy coated, with a crunch that reverberates through the speakers.

Whether or not the band’s touchstones feel like echoes from another era to you, the band’s hooks are there to snag your heart. The pieces bounce and bound through the headphones, spring out of the the speakers and encourage the windows to swing wide. Few albums from 2024 have sounded like a splash of sunshine quite like C’est Déjà L’heure. Harmonies soar over the incessant gallop of guitars and the licorice snap of drums. It’s hard to fight the urge to hit replay each time that the album skids to a stop. At under 30 min, its only drawback is that it leaves the listener wanting more so be prepared to wear out the grooves on this one. One of 2024’s best debuts!