This newsletter is an extension of the 2022 Summer Album Guide, and will evolve to include writing about the community, the city and the world in areas other than hot vinyl and vital music. But for now consider it a gesture to continue the art of the album review, forever disappearing from our print newspapers. - Dave Bidini
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Rural Alberta Advantage
The Plague Dogs
Like people, some bands you just don’t get, and the mystery only deepens the more beloved they become. The complication is furthered when the band happens to be local-- inevitably, you’ll find yourself shifting from one foot to the other while in line behind the bass player at Contra or Sam James-- and you’re forced to exit social situations where everyone is smitten. You start to wonder whether the problem is you, not them, but it’s the writer’s job, I suppose, to push through and follow in case the group writes something that punches a hole in your drywall. You’d guess there aren’t enough hours in the week to do this, and you’d be right.
Rural Alberta Advantage are a band that, were I studying the back of their hockey card, I would be expected to like: acoustic folk-rock centre, drums thundering when they have to, elevated lyricism, and Alberta/Ontario musicians, a beguiling cultural cocktail. But their songwriting has always left my arms-folded, and singer Nils Edenloff-- while possessing quality vocal distinction: character, range and passion-- keeps me at a distance from what the music is, or isn’t, achieving. It’s my work to figure out why exactly this is, but in some cases, I’m left reaching.
The good news, however, is that their new song “Plague Dogs” is deeply compelling and even though it still goes quiet/loud/quiet/loud and covers the usual prairie gothic terrain, it’s heavy and wild while still honouring the band’s autumn-leaf and first-frost patina, finally, I think, fulfilling what was promised to me as an ambivalent listener: a cold place that is ultimately suffused with warmth. Also, having animals-- even better, dogs-- as main characters is one of the keys to my heart. If Zeppelin doing Watership Down is their trope, I may join the ride.
Buy it on Bandcamp HERE
Fast Romantics
Outta Love
An existential teen ballad that sails along with a gorgeous singalong that’s degrees from “I Want to Know What Love Is,” but far enough away that it sounds like it’s being sung on a city bus, or maybe I’m just imagining the video, where the portly driver joins in at the end. The Fast Romantics have always pleasantly stacked decades while covering them in the syrup of nostalgic adventure; no straight choice when others might go for a simpler time-trip. This song is Indie 88 candy, but would be better served on a Zoomer or Mighty Q loop, where people in their 60s and 70s suddenly discover the band, then gather outside the condo to take the bus to the concert hall, where, at first, they’re side-eyed by kids until, along with the portly driver, everyone joins in at the end.
Listen to the single HERE
Ducks LTD.
Invitation
I mean, c’mon. This all too easy to like: a profound Feelies song (are there any other kind?) performed by your varsity favourites, who also recreate songs by The Cure and JMC on a new EP. Among younger groups, Ducks sound the most like the bands I first discovered playing at the Spadina Hotel in the mid-80s-- The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos, Thought Rockets, Plasterscene Replicas, Blue Peter, The Numbers, and Boys Brigade (who never showed up the first time we went to see them)-- and their charming guitar patterns and quick tip-tap drumming sew together the small lost sounds of a city that, at one point, was actually pretty bitchin’ when it came to power pop and picture-sleeved 45s and melodic bands like so many wrens chirruping down Queen and King. It’s sometimes nice when a record gives you little to grouse over. Grouse. See where that got us?
Buy it on Bandcamp HERE