Alvvays graduate into the big league on a charm filled evening in London

But their ascent hasn’t seen them turn into divas, if anything, live they still perform with the humility of a support act, which is part of their charm. While they’re very much a band, their individual characteristics are equally important to the music they create. There’s something of the Peanuts cartoon gang about them, keyboard player Kerri MacLellan is a dead ringer for the studious Marcie, guitarist Alec O'Hanley is the philosophical, comfort-blanket carrying Linus and singer Molly Rankin is, of course, the sensitive but kindly Charlie Brown.

The subtext of Peanuts was its hero’s quest to succeed in life in order to win the love of the ever elusive little red-haired girl and Alvvays lyrics have a similarly yearning feel. On “Adult Diversion” the musings on trying to be noticed by someone (‘is it a good time, or is it highly inappropriate?’) are comparable to Charlie Brown’s soliloquies about his unattainable crush.

But it’s not an evening of earnestness, quite the opposite and the mood is so celebratory it feels like a victory lap at the Olympic Games. Rankin, dressed in a black dress and obligatory white trainers is endearingly chatty throughout. At one point she asks the audience not to hate her for counting Noel Gallagher among her musical heroes and describes meeting him this week. ‘It was just for a few seconds, I tried to hug him and he said ‘Thank you’, then he turned around with his grimace and said ‘Alvvays? Like the shampoo?’ Her response to him brings the house down, ‘No, like the tampons.’

They play every song from Alvvays but a three-song run particularly takes the breath away. It starts with the uncertain, frustrated “Atop A Cake” and its heart-breaking narrative flows into the patience and yearning of “Dives”. Closing this wondrous triptych is the dulcet “Party Police”, the conversational tone of the line ‘We can find comfort in debauchery‘ possesses the same polite, almost chaste feel of Morrissey’s ‘Fifteen minutes with you? Well I wouldn’t say no’ on The Smiths “Reel Around The Fountain.”

There’s also a handful of new songs. Like another of their heroes The Primitives, “Hey” continues their penchant for bubblegum pop music and with its ebullient melody “New Haircut” - which Rankin explains is simply ‘about making your boyfriend get a stupid haircut’ – is a hit in the waiting.

They close with their anthem “Archie, Marry Me” and it’s golden, generating a love in the air that you can almost touch. The chorus provokes such a tumultuous singalong it’s like being at a football match.

The first encore sees Rankin take the stage alone, explaining "I’m going to do something weird". She eases into Alvvays closing song "Red Planet" accompanied by just a backing track and its lines read like a Sylvia Plath poem "And I waited for forever and that was just delusional / So I painted all these pictures of Earth but that's unusual / Unusual to you". It’s lovely yet lovelorn, incredibly intimate yet distant at the same time and Rankin’s voice fills the hall, not through vocal gymnastics but the warmth she brings to the lyric.

They end with a song "by a woman we really love", the late, lamented Kirsty MacColl’s “He’s On The Beach’, which is a perfect fit with Alvvays’ song-writing, using a similarly observational, diary-like approach to describe the ups and downs of love. If I was to quibble, MacColl’s "They Don’t Know" (which could have been written for them), would have been an even better choice.

This evening Alvvays were as charming as they were entrancing. It felt like a coronation of their debut albums wonderfully universal songs and gave some clues to where they're heading next. Even though their music often has a sadness and loneliness worthy of Charlie Brown himself, tonight was so joyous that everyone left with a smile on their face.