Tom Dunne: Alvvays are the latest band to nod to brilliant Big Star 

Not enough people know about Big Star. Here are some of groups who have been inspired by the trailblazing American outfit 

Molly Rankin of Alvvays, a band whose latest album has an obvious Big Star influence. (Photo by Matt Cowan/Getty Images for Coachella)

There are many reasons to love the new Alvvays album, Blue Rev. It’s loaded with choruses, hooks, harmonies, gorgeous lyrics and key changes. In DJ speak it is ‘hook-tastic’. It is clever and gentle and bruised. But it is more: It is yet another album, that wears its Big Star influence proudly on its sleeve.

Big Star, as I can mansplain, are the “greatest band you have never heard”. This is a hackneyed cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason. They sold almost no albums over their short career and yet REM’s Peter Buck would describe them as “a Rosetta Stone for a whole generation”.