Saturday 18 July 2009
the Ballad of the RAA
I’ve been doing this blog long enough now for some of the first bands I blogged about to have released subsequent albums which I’ve either a) love just as much if not more, or b) felt disappointed by and therefore chose to ignore altogether. I don’t want you to think that The Rural Alberta Advantage falls into the latter category, since I didn’t note the official release (or re-release depending on how you cut it) of Hometowns by their new label, Saddle Creek. It wasn’t that long ago that the first release of Hometowns got some major QBiM love, but in some ways it feels like ages.
What’s always struck me is how assured the songs on Hometowns sound. They don’t come across as cocky, but just very comfortable in their own skin, which is probably why they can mix and blend sounds that don’t always look good together on paper (country and punk? disco and folk?). I haven’t investigated whether the new version of Hometowns has any differences from their self-produced original, but I hope that it hasn’t. The way I see it, the band was signed to Saddle Creek on the strength of the album they independently produced, so why tamper with something that has already been successful?
Hometowns would have been a great album to have as part of the Polaris Music Prize competition (it was eligible for last year’s prize), but the groundswell of support for the album and The Rural Alberta Advantage themselves has gone beyond anything that a nomination could have brought. Signing the band to Saddle Creek, along with fellow Canucks Tokyo Police Club, Sebastien Grainger and Land of Talk, is a sign of Canada’s continued prominence on the indie (i.e. not major label) music scene. As an advocate for Canadian music, I’m thrilled for their success and so curious about what the future will bring. Advantage Canada indeed.
MP3: The Rural Alberta Advantage “Frank, AB”
MP3: The Rural Alberta Advantage “Don’t Haunt This Place”
Myspace: The Rural Alberta Advantage
Twitter: The Rural Alberta Advantage
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under MP3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
