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Saturday, February 25, 2023

The Rural Alberta Advantage and the explosive wanderlust and melancholy of "Plague Dogs" (Official Video)

 













"everybody's running out of time, everybody's coming out to you and I..."


Raw passion, unbridled energy, the two most important things for an artist, for a band. Listening to "Plague Dogs" by Toronto, Canada's indie folk-rock trio The Rural Alberta Advantage and I quickly realized that they have enough raw passion and unbridled energy to fill a trio of dump trucks. There is so much to love here, the wonderful sparse, yet powerful aesthetic that gives dimension to their sound provides rollercoaster of emotionality. When the tom toms are hit hard, when the potent sharp keys penetrate and when singer / guitarist Nils Edenloff bares his soul there is an amped up dynamism as the song moves from heavy alt rock to singer songwriter reflections and back again. Don't think that the indie folk rock tag minimized the power. When the song goes off the rails I couldn't help but think of The Drones and the garden rock aspects made me flash on the iconic The Band, also out of Toronto. 

About “Plague Dogs”, guitarist/vocalist Nils Edenloff shares , “Being a child of the 80's the movie ‘Watership Down’ was long ago seared into my brain, and it was in 2019 that I came across one of Richard Adams’ other novels ‘Plague Dogs’. Having read ‘Watership Down’ and ‘Shardick’ when I first moved to Toronto, I found myself drawn to ‘Plague Dogs’, and found the title creeping into a song we were playing around with in early 2020.

The song doesn't end up following the events of the novel in any way, but it underscores the specific time frame that we started to work on this song. The feelings of dread, uncertainty and isolation that I felt while reading the novel, along with the eerily similar feelings around early on in the pandemic are so tightly coupled with this song that it all feels like one for me.”  

"Plague Dogs" feels like wanderlust with heavy rocks having to be carried along the way, tender and explosive, haunting and melancholy and like the hard parts of life it punches and survives it all. 

-Robb Donker Curtius 








THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM 


https://open.spotify.com/artist/0v6gOfGBclTSGu6agfXb23

https://www.facebook.com/ruralalberta

https://www.instagram.com/ruralalberta/


Led by singer/guitarist and Alberta native Nils Edenloff, the Rural Alberta Advantage are an anthemic indie folk-rock trio from Toronto, Canada who balance rhythmic intensity with expansive melodies. They scored a Top 30 independent album with their Polaris Prize-nominated sophomore release, Departing, in 2011. Subsequent efforts Mended with Gold (2014), The Wild (2017), and The Rise (2022) continued to see regional success, while frequently appearing on Billboard's U.S. Heatseekers chart. Singer/guitarist Nils Edenloff, a native of Alberta, Canada, founded the trio in 2005 with drummer Paul Banwatt and bassist/keyboardist Amy Cole. The group soon self-released a demo recording, followed by The Rural Alberta Advantage EP in 2006. Two years later they made their full-length debut with Hometowns. While little was known at the time of its release, Hometowns got a big boost when online music retailers championed the album. The band got another boost in March 2009 when they played a high-profile showcase at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas alongside one of the festival's most anticipated bands, Grizzly Bear. The buzz about the Rural Alberta Advantage reached the point where Omaha-based indie label Saddle Creek Records picked up Hometowns for reissue in 2009. The group's much-anticipated second studio album, Departing, arrived in March 2011, and earned the group a prestigious Polaris Music Prize nomination. It was followed by Mended with Gold in 2014, on Saddle Creek -- both efforts landed on Billboard's independent and Heatseekers album charts. In September 2016, Cole left the group to pursue other projects. Robin Hatch joined the lineup in time to help test new material on the road for album number four, The Wild, which included the rousing singles "White Lights" and "Beacon Hill," the latter of which was inspired by the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires. Cole re-joined the group in 2018, and in 2022 the trio issued The Rise, the first installment of a planned three-EP collection ~ Marcy Donelson & Jason Birchmeier




The Rural Alberta Advantage, alt rock, indie folk rock, Toronto Canada, Three piece power house, passion and unbridled energy, "Plague Dogs" (Official Video),

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