Monday, January 11, 2010

The Rural Alberta Advantage - "In the Summertime" (A History Lesson*)

This is a story. A story of indie rock's recent history. A story that no one else is going to tell you about. They'll insist that they don't want to talk about how they used to listen to The Rapture, but the truth is that they weren't actually listening to The Rapture because they weren't that cool.

Once upon a time, it was 2003. Before that it was 2002 and before that it was 2001. We were all in high school then and blogs and Pitchfork weren't as important as they would become. Emo was an acceptable genre. It was a simpler time.

Indie rock was really seen as a kind of emo-ish thing. Listening to Bright Eyes was still acceptable. Arcade Fire hadn't happened yet. Postal Service was a pretty cool buzzband in the single-oriented time.

There was a record label called Saddle Creek. It was like how Merge or Domino is now. All the cool buzzbands were on Saddle Creek: Bright Eyes, Cursive, The Faint, Azure Ray.

Saddle Creek was located in Omaha, Nebraska. I know this may seem hard to believe, but Omaha was seen almost the same way Brooklyn is now. It's crazy. A stupid little town in the middle of nowhere! What were we thinking?

The Rural Alberta Advantage are a band on Saddle Creek, which apparently still exists. (Hmm, Tokyo Police Club seems to be on Saddle Creek too. The More You Know.*)



I posted "In the Summertime" because it's the only song that they have a video of on YouTube. It's funny how things work out that way.

They got some free mp3s on their website here.

I think "Don't Haunt This Place" is probably their best song. The rest of Hometowns is great too, so don't hesitate to buy the album. The dudes have gotta pay their rent.