I awoke the other night to The Rural Alberta Advantage's (RAA) song "The Ballad of the RAA" pulsing in my head and it was just the sign I needed to pick up the album and give it a few more listens. "The Ballad of the RAA" is a song that begins with the building of simplistic rhythm and synthesizer and courses through powerful raw vocals accompanied by beautiful chimes and then culminates with a stripped down acoustic guitar and vocal melody that makes your heart sink. This musical experience is echoed throughout the album without being repeated or uninteresting. Hometowns has an innate quality of being raw, powerful and honest all while appearing to not be trying too hard. In otherwords, RAA's music is sincere and not over produced with the right doses of raw edge and pure emotion. Give the RAA an acoustic guitar and they can rock you with intensity rarely heard out of the more subdued brother to the electric guitar and then they will turn around and sing lullabies that make you wonder if they had to perform an exorcism on this same acoustic guitar to make it so sweet.
I actually found out about The Rural Alberta Advantage on the Metacritic forums (great place to find new music by the way) a while back but have only recently been exposed to them with the release of Hometowns as one of eMusic's "Music Selects" series, as their album was only available through the band's website. I have seen comparisons of RAA to Neutral Milk Hotel and I will go ahead and agree with the similarities although I would say that RAA show a little more straight forward pop sensibility. Nevertheless, the RAA are traveling in good company to be compared to Nuetral Milk Hotel and they will not disappoint. I can see the RAA being somewhat of a Bon Iver indie Cinderella story with the snowballing of publicity they are suddenly recieving and seemingly coming out of nowhere.
I actually found out about The Rural Alberta Advantage on the Metacritic forums (great place to find new music by the way) a while back but have only recently been exposed to them with the release of Hometowns as one of eMusic's "Music Selects" series, as their album was only available through the band's website. I have seen comparisons of RAA to Neutral Milk Hotel and I will go ahead and agree with the similarities although I would say that RAA show a little more straight forward pop sensibility. Nevertheless, the RAA are traveling in good company to be compared to Nuetral Milk Hotel and they will not disappoint. I can see the RAA being somewhat of a Bon Iver indie Cinderella story with the snowballing of publicity they are suddenly recieving and seemingly coming out of nowhere.
If you don't have an eMusic account you can order RAA's Hometowns through their webpage found here, just clink on the "audio" link. Either way check the RAA out as they are definite pleasant surprise in 2008. -(8/10)
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