THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Lafayette, 11 Goods Way, London N1C 4DP. December 4, 2023
I have never been to Western Canada. But listening to Nils Edenhoff’s achingly charming angst-filled vocals in the Lafayette Club in King’s Cross, North London, I feel as though I can hear the silt and rust, ground from the last factory in Edmonton, peppering his voice with an uneven mixture of bleakness and beauty, of a rich and storied pain yet shimmering with light of a beam cast through an aperture of hope, imbuing The Rural Alberta Advantage’s sound with the compelling character of the province of Alberta and all its wonderful, Northern transatlantic depth.
It is a heady mixture of character that, being adoptively from an area that I also felt had its own abandoned, dark sort of beauty, the Pocono mountains of Northeast Pennsylvania, really resonated with me.
Very few artists are able to evoke such a keen sense of place with what feels like a sense of nostalgia and regret, longing and lament. Springsteen does it well. So did Dylan. And Nils Edenhoff’s throaty vocals, laid smoothly against and at the same time perfectly complemented by keyboardist and backing vocalist Amy Cole’s mellifluously ethereal harmonies and stanchioned down into a seamless structure by Paul Banwatt’s machine-like yet childishly joyous thrashing of the drums, manage to evoke a keen sense of desire and location. This is a band that brings the best and the saddest, but mostly the boldest and fiercest of Western Canada with them, bursting with a frenetic energy onto the stage and aurally knitting together a sense of warmth and a cloud of community for the just under two hours they have on stage.
They were supported by fellow Canadian indie rocker Zoon, who channelled his inner Malkmus, shoegazing through long, ponderous numbers accompanied by an electric cellist. Then, unlike many prairie based artists, The RAA enter and exeunt with a real sense of theater, coming in through the crowd and strumming through a gentle acoustic ballad, ‘FSHG’ from their fifth and latest studio album, The Rise and Fall. Niftily they did the same to gently round out their set with the musical, lullaby-like quality of the last song of their second album, Departing, the aptly named ‘Good Night’.
There is a charisma and charm and a wonderfully edgy clarity about The RAA. Again surprising for a deceptively simple three piece, mostly led with the most punkily played acoustic guitar on this side of Lake Michigan. New songs from The Rise and Fall were paraded out and though they sound catchy and uncomplicated, they are also riveting.
Alas, The RAA are done in the UK for now, but they promise not to let another five years elapse before coming back. But they are heading to Europe now and Stateside in the new year. And I will say the same thing here that I have already said to my family – if you’re anywhere near any of the tour locations, go and see them! A great band that deserves more recognition than they’ve ever got.
So humble and so infectiously compelling, especially for the small, bleak industrial towner in everyone!
