Mike Went West put Hometown by The Rural Alberta Advantage on his best albums of 2008 list. I was intrigued by their name–as cheesy as that sounds–but the name led me to their music, so all is good.
MWW says the Toronto-based group “is one of the best new bands I’ve heard in a long time.”
Here is the MySpace description the band provides:
The Rural Alberta Advantage play indie-rock folk songs about hometowns and heartbreak, born out of images from growing up in Central and Northern Alberta. They sing about summers in the Rockies and winters on the farm, ice breakups in the spring time and the oil boom’s charm, the mine workers on compressed, the equally depressed, the city’s slow growth and the country’s wild rose, but mostly the songs just try to embrace the advantage of growing up in Alberta.
Excellent. I want to feel the place a band comes from and if the band is supremely talented I do feel it. Take America, The Eagles or Steely Dan–I instantly hear Los Angeles (and the perfect production of LA studios when one of their songs comes on the radio). But The Rural Alberta Advantage isn’t about that, thankfully. Their music is the kind of stripped down, unpretentious folk-inspired pop one might listen to with friends around a campfire in Western Canada.
[MP3] “Don’t Haunt This Place” and “Frank, AB by The Rural Alberta Advantage