We’re very excited for tonight’s Milwaukee show featuring The Rural Alberta Advantage and Conrad Plymouth at Mad Planet. One of our favorite shows from last year was The Rural Alberta Advantage show at Cactus Club during Radio Summer Camp. That was a great night for sure and I expect nothing less from tonight. In the event you are unfamiliar, here’s Alex’s take on The RAA’s fantastic album Hometowns
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By Alex Schaaf
Continuing on my “theme” of discussing the most underappreciated albums of 2009, I’d like to look at The Rural Alberta Advantage, and their album Hometowns. This album was technically released last year, but it wasn’t until the RAA signed to Saddle Creek Records and re-released the album in July of this year that it received widespread recognition, so it is widely considered to be a 2009 album.
The Rural Alberta Advantage is a trio from Toronto, consisting of Paul Banwatt, Amy Cole and Nils Edenloff. The band was selected as eMusic’s featured artist of the month in November of 2008, which started a stream of buzz that culminated in the Saddle Creek signing, a much-discussed appearance at SXSW that included a slot opening for Grizzly Bear, and many positive reviews of Hometowns, including a 3.5 star review from Spin and a 8.0 rating from Pitchfork.
When discussing the music, the first thing that usually comes up is how similar the lead singer sounds to Jeff Mangum, of Neutral Milk Hotel fame. This is a fair comparison, as certain songs like “Luciana” and “Rush Apart” could easily pass off as Neutral Milk Hotel songs, with Nils Edenloff’s nasally yells sounding like they would fit right into the Elephant Six collective. But over the course of the album, Edenloff distinguishes himself as a unique vocalist with an impressive range of styles, from brooding rumination to raucous hollering.
The real force behind the music of the RAA is the drummer, Paul Banwatt. Banwatt has one of the most distinctive drumming styles out there today, with his frantic and frenzied fills moving the songs along with a propulsive groove, full of 16th-note hi hat passages and quick kick drum patterns. Songs like “Don’t Haunt This Place,” one of the highest points of the album, simply could not exist without Banwatt, as the drum parts add a unique and contrasting color to an otherwise somber song.
The album excels in its sparseness; other than a few horns and cellos here and there, the songs largely exist on acoustic guitar, bass, keyboards and drums, with little excessiveness as the songs are boiled down to their bare essentials. The record comes off as more of an exhibit of their capabilities as a live band rather than a display of studio trickery, and it gets much of its power from this fact.
Overall, this album is highly recommended by many, and I will add to this praise. Themes of hometowns and heartbreak echo throughout the 13-song collection, as the band has managed to make something that sounds so familiar yet so unique at the same time.
Buy: The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns
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Myspace: The Rural Alberta Advantage
MP3: The Rural Alberta Advantage – “Don’t Haunt this Place”
MP3: The Rural Alberta Advantage – “Frank, AB”
