You have to give the Rurall Alberta Advantage props for not giving up. After finishing recording their album Hometowns almost two years ago, the band had been selling the disc primarily at shows and doing the DIY routine until it was finally picked up by Saddle Creek earlier this year. The group, led by the Jeff Mangum sounding singer/songwriter Nils Edenloff, mix in sweeping arrangements with dramatic vocals and heart-on-sleeve lyrics. On “Frank, AB” the band combines Edenloff’s plaintive vocals with a stuttering keyboard line and some galloping drum rhythms. The song starts with a skeletal guitar part pacing Edenloff’s scratchy crooning, building momentum by slowly adding the other instruments and following the emotive vocals of Edenloff and his female counterpart Amy Cole. When the music drops out at the end of the song and Edenloff and Cole’s voices serenely mesh together, the band highlights the bruised beauty that is at the center of what has earned it so much press, and shows why they have a legitimate chance to make it big with the national release of Hometowns.

The Rural Alberta Advantage “Frank, AB” (mp3)

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