it's not "The Rural Saskatchewan Advantage," cause there isn't one
In my constantly expanding list of music I've been disgustingly late on, I'm doing a bit better if you judge by The Rural Alberta Advantage. I actually picked up quite quick on them from hearing "Don't Haunt This Place" from a blog that now escapes my memory. It was back in April of this year...and I loved it. Everything about it. I never tired of hearing it, it was a perfect jam, short and sweet -- but in usual fashion, I never gave their album Hometowns a chance, even after a glowing 8.0/10 review from Pitchfork, probably my most trusted source for musical advice. Late in November though, after a happenchance incident I'll describe in a bit, I decided I had to get the rest of the album and give it a spin.
In a bit of my defense, "The Deathbridge In Lethbridge" was the second song I heard off Hometowns, and it's probably the one black sheep from the outstanding tracklist. But instead of getting into all that, you know what? If any group's gonna get the song-by-song album review treatment, I have no problem giving it to The Rural Alberta Advantage:
"The Ballad Of The RAA" | With such a self-referencing name, it's a pretty good track to start an album with. The fast-paced and muted drum kick gets things going, and Neils Edenloff's voice exhibits itself in a way that you're either like "yeah, I really like this guy, this is gonna be good" -- or basically the exact opposite reaction. You can feel the emotion and strain in his delivery, and the "singing in a barn" exhibition of it during the a capella ending is icing on the cake, along with the triangle tinkles playing like snowflakes above the insistent drumming. I've heard that he gives off a Jeff Mangum-like vibe (of Neutral Milk Hotel), but having heard maybe one or two of NMH's tunes, it's something I'd have to look more into before I could say one way or the other.
"Rush Apart" | There's something endlessly charming about the acoustic guitar and Edenloff's far-away-sounding vocals that start off "Rush Apart." In an album of comparatively short songs (most are in the two-minute range), this is the second-shortest at 1:56, but still manages to flesh itself out into something more than respectable. It's like a campfire tune that managed to convince an entire drumset to make the trek. When Nils says "it's hard to know what's right/I need you tonight," it's one of the love-soaked references on an album chock-full of them. You'd love to know who hurt him this badly, because there has to be a place where all this creativity stems from. And on that note, this is probably not an album you want to be listening to while you're with someone; it functions much better when you're trying to get over someone.
"The Deathbridge In Lethbridge" | The RAA does punk? The vocals have an almost-evil bent to them, no doubt helped by the line "you let me down, I let you down/with your grandfather in the ground." Not to say it's not a good song - it is - but it seems kind of out of place with the rest of the tracks on Hometowns. The others tend to have a more or less melancholy feel to them, instead of the seemingly revengeful tone of "Deathbridge." At least they named it the right way though. Let's skip ahead, cause as mentioned above, this one pretty much turned me off The RAA the first few times I laid ears on it.
"Don't Haunt This Place" | The track that pretty much got it started for me with these guys. It's got that same upbeat and stuttering drumming (courtesy of part-time Woodhands member Paul Banwatt...a fact I found out when I caught both groups at Osheaga this summer), and if I ever said "Sun In An Empty Room" was the best song to play if you were leaving an old apartment Friends-style (and I did say that), this would certainly be a close runner-up -- especially if you shared said apartment with a significant other. The lyrics change up confusingly between declaring the whole ordeal as "hard" and "fun" then switching to "hard" and "dumb" effortlessly. Keyboardist Amy Cole makes one of her few cameos providing precious backing vocals, and the emotions are laid bare for all to see with crisp-clear lyricism.
"The Deadroads" | For all the acoustic guitar abounding on Hometowns, you can't really hear many familiar strains from other songs, a rarity when all you've got to work with are six strings and some chords. The drumming again makes itself well-known here, but I'm not gonna take all the credit for picking up on it; Pitchfork pointed it out pretty well in their review, and I can't help hearing the album without focusing strongly on the superb percussion. It's much the same way I listen to The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema; I've always been a fan of nerdishly drumming along to the beat, and that album along with Hometowns provide me with ample and exemplary opportunities. The "oooo-oooo-oooo-oooooooo"s add that little something extra to this tune, and Nils brings his now-dependable rakish croon to the forefront once again.
"Drain The Blood" | If "Don't Haunt This Place" first turned me on to the group, and "The Deathbridge In Lethbridge" almost turned me off of them, then "Drain The Blood" was that track that truly sold me on The RAA and sucked me in enough to get Hometowns. Even at 2:50 long, this is one of those strange tracks that feels much shorter than that, a quick-burst of sound and passion. It's one of the few where Edenloff showcases more than one side of his voice: the mid-range delivery in the verses, the more throaty and alternately pleading vocals of the chorus, and the outright desperate croaks in the break the song so abruptly builds towards.
Whereas most songs are rollercoaster rides, with multiple ups and downs, "Drain The Blood" comes off like those super-fast thrill rides, that speed you up until you think you can't go any faster, then it's all over like that. It also signals the album turning more to a deemed cohesiveness: where the first few songs kind of stand apart, and prepare you for some cross-Alberta road trip, "Drain The Blood" is like where the road-trip comes to a head, and you know you can't really look at the people you're with quite the same again for the rest of the trip/album.
"Luciana" | In reference to the above, this is kind of that "night after" track, where you can just imagine having a few too many at the local dive bar, and The RAA playing this tune up on stage the whole while. The drums really stand out here for me, the crashing cymbals accentuating Nils' now-whining voice with a vigour that's kind of lacking from the vocal delivery (not something you can say often about the vocals on Hometowns). The horn section also makes an appearance, showing The RAA's versatility and continually-surprising take on alternative rock: they do everything well. Like it's not even fair; they pick and choose their styles and pull them all off expertly, like they've been at this much longer than the four years it's been since they formed. Every track is a rewarding listen, and the album as a whole is that much more listenable because of that.
"Frank, AB" | They also tend to nail those little things that bring their songs to that "next level." They again employ some "oooo-oooo"s, this time with male vocals, and add in the right amount of bass, snare, and everything else that makes their instrumentation just lush enough without being overpowering. The lonesomeness of "Frank, AB" is easy to hear, like it's the hangover "morning after" to the above track. The minute-long a capella at the end is especially moving, with Amy joining in with Nils ever so quietly, like the hand on his back as he's getting it all off his chest.
As an aside, before I wrote this entire review, I never really considered Hometowns as anything more than a love-and-loss-tinged album, but the closer I listen and analyze it, the road trip analogy and all the emotions and scenery that goes with it makes more and more sense, as even some of the next few tracks will show. The fact it works on so many levels is another great thing about the compilation. Heck, for all the place-name-dropping going on, just about the only thing I haven't picked up on yet is the painting of visual scenery you'd assume would come from the album's evocative cover art.
"The Air" | A swooning acoustic guitar and piano-inflected slow-it-down kinda tune? Yeah, I guess there truly is a bit of everything on here. "The Air" literally clears the air, even though it states "the air is unbearably harmful tonight." The clean slate provided by the sparse instrumentation lets the piano shine and the guitar slide along with purpose, keeping a calming quiet over everything before the album itself slows the pace down a bit. Not much to say here; you just have to check out Hometowns and hear for yourself.
"Sleep All Day" | Of all the tunes, this is probably my favorite to drum along to, with the exceptionally nimble snare providing the perfect balance to the organ-like keyboard and longing vocals. For the monotony of the track (over 3:46, it never really goes up, but it never creeps that far down either) it keeps your attention admirably. I really can't rave enough about the diversity of this album. Even though there's a few of these slower numbers, they're never done the same way, and all the originality and creativity in the world seeps out of them in a way I've heard from few groups, let alone on their debut full-length. I have all the faith in the world that The RAA will be able to bang out another album on endlessly enjoyable folk-rock-pop along the same lines as Hometowns, without copying any of the essence or ideas from the latter.
"Four Night Rider" | The shortest tune on here, by one second over "Rush Apart," you can truly feel the frenetic pace set forth by the energetic drumming, and when everything kind of explodes right before the end, you can easily hear the full musical force of the trio in a kind of last gasp effort to convince you that, hey, if you don't like us by now, we're really gonna try our damnedest anyways. Amy's vocals come through the strongest right before that section, drowning out Edenloff's for the first and only time on the album. There's nothing on "Four Night Rider" that hints towards the drawn-out and boring "four night bike ride out of town" to Edmonton professed by the band. There's even an underlying triumph to it all that's a little hard to explain on here, so again, you've really gotta check out the full album.
"Edmonton" | If it was all building up to something, Hometowns' true piece-du-resistance is this tune, just by an edge over the other amazing standouts on the album. It starts off boisterous and doesn't let up until the tambourine breaks in around 1:45; but it's just setting you up for the re-build, where the percussion builds back up again, the guitar becomes more insistent, Edenloff's voice gets that familiar strain, the lyrics take their most powerful turn, and then after the once-through, it slows down once more into the emotional "and I will never try/to forget you're not alive," then breaks out into full-force once again for the victory lap around the whole damn countryside.
On a note again: I write each song's review while I listen to it on repeat. It's a common thing I do whenever I review any song or album, because it puts me in the best mood to write about each individual track. With every other song on here though, I've had to take multiple listens to encapsulate what I really want to say about it; with "Edmonton" however, I banged it out in almost precisely the 3:52 run-time of the song. I'm not trying to say that I'm a fast typer or that I'm so good at describing songs or whatever -- my point is that "Edmonton" is so immediate, so good, that it can't help but being taken at face value, because it's raw emotion on a musical level. Plus it kinda gets to me in a way, so for whatever reason, I wouldn't wanna go through the whole process of listening to it again, with that slow build and everything. Take that for what you will.
"In The Summertime" | Much like the love interest in this tune, we're done. I have some personal interest in this song actually, and every time I listen to Hometowns all the way through, it's always "Edmonton" and "In The Summertime" that get to me the most. I don't know if it's just where I am right now in my life, or if The Rural Alberta Advantage just crafts songs so damn well that they call to mind feelings and emotions you didn't think could well up so easily like that. It doesn't make much sense for me to try and explain this one, and I say that just as it closes out its 2:38 song length.
I don't think I've ever been so emotionally invested in an album to be honest, and it kind of pains me to say that, because I wonder where I was way back in July when this thing actually came out and I had my chance. But I guess life's all about those missed chances...but also about the joy you feel when you're still able to get what you desire, even after it's seemingly too late. Sorry.
(Buy Hometowns here: Amazon)
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