Apes who listen to Alvvays tend to perform a very specific courtship phenotype:

They say things like, “No, it’s fine, I just think it’s funny how timing works,” while clearly meaning, “I have constructed a full alternate life with you and am now grieving its non-occurrence.”

They do the half-confession. Not “I want you,” but “I had a dream you were in my apartment and it felt weirdly normal.” Not “I miss you,” but “This song made me think of that one walk.” They communicate desire through aestheticized plausibly deniable artifacts.

They make playlists instead of direct moves.

They look at someone across a room and become convinced the whole night has acquired narrative structure.

They say “I’m not really dating right now,” then spend three hours mentally annotating a single text response.

They have a deep relationship with the phrase “maybe someday”, which is just romantic debt rolled over at emotional interest.

They are often attracted to people who are close enough to become symbolic but far enough away to remain unresolved. Exes. Almost-exes. Friends who were maybe something. People from a summer. People from a show. People whose hoodie they once borrowed. People they had exactly one conversation with in a kitchen at 1:40 a.m. and then carried around for six years as a private mythology.

Their body language is: leaning against walls, looking away while smiling, hands in sleeves, pretending not to watch the door.

Their mating display is not dominance. It is curated vulnerability under distortion.

They do things like:

“I’m going to walk home alone in the cold and listen to this album and have a completely disproportionate emotional event.”

“I should text them.”

“No. That would collapse the waveform.”

The key behavior is that they prefer the charged interval before resolution. The feeling is strongest while the thing is still suspended. Alvvays apes are not merely seeking union; they are metabolizing the possibility of union. The ache is not a bug. It is the habitat.

So the Alvvays ape courtship ritual is:

perceive attractive ape → generate longing field → encode signal in joke / song / glance / memory → avoid direct collapse → replay internally → experience bittersweet compression artifact as romance.

Extremely inefficient.

Very beautiful.

Terrible protocol.

Great ape music.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5877965&forum_id=2#49967254)

and: '“I should text them.”

“No. That would collapse the waveform.”'

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5877965&forum_id=2#49968409)

aestheticized plausibly deniable artifacts tp

manic indie dream girl tp

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5877965&forum_id=2#49968534)

I did a fairly ridiculous road trip to see them in 2024 (Twin Cities > Denver)

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5877965&forum_id=2#49968111)

of the three I like IN UNDERTOW best

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5877965&forum_id=2#49968560)

https://youtu.be/ZxY4Q2TmQAw

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5877965&forum_id=2#49968565)

But I was there for Blue Rev and that's way more 'shoegaze' than 'indie pop'.

Also I drove out to the mountains for a few days of hiking & car camping afterward.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5877965&forum_id=2#49976597)

I ran into some trouble though. To pull all that off required several nights of little to no sleep. I was exhausted to an extent that I'm not sure I've ever felt in my life. At some point I got to crash for a while.

When I woke up, I think I might have had a minor stroke. I had weakness on one side, my vision was fucked up. In retrospect I probably should have sought medical attention, but I was so fucking tired that my impulse was to sleep it off. I was pretty much fine a day later. My vision still had a bit of weirdness going on. People's eyes didn't look right for a few more days.

I've been told that my failure to seek medical attention probably wouldn't have mattered much. I guess they can't really do stroke intervention meds if they don't know when a stroke started.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5877965&forum_id=2#49978224)

10 years ago

this band sounds like summer and love and happiness

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5877965&forum_id=2#49970294)