Canadian Indie Rock Band The Rural Alberta Advantage Comes to the Hi-Dive

Our neighbors to the north sure do love their indie rock, supporting a healthy scene with acts that have broken into the American market over the years. One of these Canadian exports is The Rural Alberta Advantage. The trio formed in Toronto in 2005 and has relentlessly toured the provinces and states ever since.

Guitarist and vocalist Nils Edenloff points to one of the band’s initial concerts in Seattle after “the great shutdown" of the pandemic. Edenloff, vocalist/keyboardist Amy Cole and drummer Paul Banwatt just couldn’t contain their enthusiasm.

“It was super emotional. It was the first time being close to people,” Edenloff says, adding that the band’s manager noted afterward that the trio “played everything incredibly fast.”

“We were just so excited.”

The Rural Alberta Advantage is back in the U.S. for a string of shows and will play the hi-dive on Tuesday, February 28, with Georgia Harmer opening. It’ll be the Canadian group's first show in the Mile High City in nearly a decade, Edenloff notes. He’s thrilled to be back in the Rockies and is grateful that fans, particularly in America, have been showing support since touring began.

“We’re lucky enough that we’re in a position that people still are remembering us," Edenloff says. "If we were just starting out now, it would be so much harder. We do feel fortunate that people are coming out to shows,” he says.

The remoteness of recent times did nothing for the band’s creativity, Edenloff laments, though the trio released an EP, The Rise, in March 2022, and started 2023 with a single, “Plague Dogs,” from another upcoming EP.

“We were kind of spinning our wheels and things weren’t jelling, but once we started getting together again in limited fashion, it really hammered home that something happens when the three of us get together,” Edenloff recalls. “I really realized that when Amy came back [in 2018, after a year-plus hiatus] into the band, like, ‘Yeah, something works between the three of us.’ It’s intangible, in a way. We all come from very different backgrounds, in terms of our interest and influences. All of these things come together in a weird collision of things, and it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. That healthy interaction, face to face, when things happen quick and fast — it’s what we needed.”

The Rural Alberta Advantage’s lyrics typically center around the bandmembers' hometowns and heartbreak. “Plague Dogs” addresses the pandemic shutdown, however, and is sonically a little different than what the trio typically does, Edenloff says.

“With ‘Plague Dogs,’ I think it’s probably more angular than a lot of stuff that we’ve put out in the past. It pushes the dynamics into the very extremes more than we have in previous songs; the drop-downs and the chorus are ultra-quiet, then the big parts are even more glorious,” he explains. “I think we have a taste for what makes us us. There’s always that throughline from the first stuff until now. ... I like playing loud and fast and hard through an acoustic guitar, while Paul wails on a kit. Those sorts of things are always going to be there. I guess we kind of lean into it more.”

Alongside compatriots such as Wolf Parade and Born Ruffians, the Rural Alberta Advantage continues to proudly carry the Canadian indie-rock flag forward. It behooves American audiences to check the group out during this run, as there may just be more to the band than meets the eye.

“I always like the fact that there’s a disconnect in what you see on stage and what the three of us are actually doing. From day one, when we started playing shows, people would come up to us and be like, ‘I didn't think that what you guys were doing on the album would be translated to such a volume with a drummer on a cocktail kit, a guy with an acoustic guitar and a female singer playing a keyboard,’” Edenloff says. “If you like any aspect of what we do, there’s a good chance that you’ll be drawn into what we’re doing live.”

The Rural Alberta Advantage, 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 28, hi-dive, 7 South Broadway. Tickets are $22-$30.