Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing

The Rural Alberta Advantage has never made a song that wasn’t urgent.

Two albums in, the trio succeeds with a deft threading of passionate, emotive lyrics with a folk core that’s been accelerated to frenzied speed. On debut album Hometowns, largely a tribute to—and lament of—their great white northern origins, this propulsion came from layered, frenzied percussion and a need to escape. This seems to be a common tale for first statements from Canadian rock bands; the album is hugely similar in focus to Wolf Parade’s Apologies to the Queen Mary.

But with sophomore effort Departing, the mania is internalized, and it drips straight from singer Nils Edenloff’s voice. Departing works almost like variations on a theme, with each song telling the story of a different breakup—track two is actually called “The Breakup.” This constant anti-magnetism comes across in the music. Edenloff oscillates between wailing and shouting, and even the slower songs seem to be bursting apart at the seams, banjo and piano and vocals circling each other like wolves.

Much of the lyrics deal with the proximity of holding and being held, and how temporary a thing this can be: “I held you on the coldest days” on “Barnes’ Yard”; “I let you go I let you go/I let you know that I’ll hold you/Black sky comes and takes you from me” on “Tornado ’87.” The Rural Alberta Advantage is obsessed with this vulnerability, and it lends the songs on Departing an essential desperation and consistency.

Although the band’s range isn’t terribly impressive at this point, Departing is a sharp statement that expands on its predecessor in a way that isn’t derivative or limiting. And in a musical atmosphere that is sometimes too glib for its own good, the driving sincerity of the RAA is welcome.