The Rural Alberta Advantage - Mended with Gold

The other comparison that’s been following The Rural Alberta Advantage for a while now is with Neutral Milk Hotel, primarily because frontman Nils Edenloff sounds not unlike Jeff Mangum. This new full-length, Mended with Gold, will do little to discourage such suggestions, but it should at least bring home the fact that there isn’t too much in the way of similarity between Edenloff’s outfit and Mangum’s formerly-reclusive men outside of his vocals; his lyrics are considerably less esoteric than Mangum’s, and instrumentally, his band try to shoot for invigorating heartland fare without sounding corny - it’s a balance they pull off more often than not this time around. Opener “Our Love...” brings the curtain up in promising fashion; drummer Paul Banwatt is given the opportunity to really show off his chops with a thrillingly off-kilter beat, and the guitars are used intelligently, sparingly, until an explosion at the midpoint.

Perhaps the problem with that track, though, is that it sets a pace that the first part of the album never really gets out of. Accusations that Mended with Gold is a one-track affair would be vindicated to that degree, and it’s not really until the superb “The Build” that there’s some real differentiation in terms of tempo - it quickly zips between acoustic simplicity and rollicking, percussion-driven ferocity. In fact, it’s Banwatt’s playing that really sets The Rural Alberta Advantage apart from simply being another folk-tinged indie rock group; on the tense, atmospheric “Vulcan, AB”, his complex, shuffling loops are the centrepoint, whilst his playing on “Not Love or Death” seems to throw up another intricacy, another clever subtlety, with every listen.

The second half of this record is certainly the stronger - it’s where the trio really come into their own, and really lay out their own sonic identity - but to their credit, it’s not that the slightly-uninspiring opening stages are insipid, or ever stoop to the lows of cynical, made-for-festivals singalongs like some of their contemporaries; it’s just that there aren’t really any songs that sound as if they could have been made by anybody else. Just as much a part of that is the fact that keyboardist Amy Cole plays a much more limited role than normal on backing vocals, too; quite why is frankly a mystery.

I’m not convinced that The Rural Alberta Advantage are exactly going to set the world on fire with Mended with Gold, but I do like what they stand for. Chuck Klosterman once said that there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure, and whilst I agree with him whole-heartedly, The Rural Alberta Advantage bring enough intelligence and thoughtfulness to their music to ensure that it’ll appeal to listeners who wouldn’t normally like to admit to listening to soaring, emotionally open indie rock; as far as I’m concerned, that can't be a bad thing.