Echo & Club Underground

The Rural Alberta Advantage

Friday, Jul 10, 2009 8:00 PM PDT
at Echo
in Los Angeles, CA

The Rural Alberta Advantage || Listen
The next band up, The Rural Alberta Advantage, were a complete surprise. I had never come across the name, and didn?t bother tracking down any songs beforehand; the eMusic honcho who introduced them said we were ?in for a treat,? and it turns out he was right. The Canadian trio (?rural Alberta? isn?t just a clever name, apparently) makes a sort of rustic, scorched-earth Americana not unlike Centro-Matic, though far heavier on the percussion?and way livelier, thanks to the antics of Manic Pixie Indie Girl Amy Cole, who spent most of the set bouncing from place to place, banging on tambourines, whipping out the occasional glockenspiel solo, and adding the cooling undercurrents to singer Paul Banwatt?s ragged ruminations. Things started a bit slow with more run-of-the-mill country-ish numbers, but they won me over the minute Banwatt ended a song by beating on his acoustic guitar, then sheepishly pronouncing that it now had ?a big SXSW crack in it.? The Onion

8:30pm / $8 Advance, $10 day of show / 18+