‘Practically naked in their straightforward sincerity’

Chart notes one of the more curious inclusions on the Harper family iPod mix—Rural Alberta Advantage. Here’s how Pitchfork summed up the band’s debut record last summer.

Chart notes one of the more curious inclusions on the Harper family iPod mix—Rural Alberta Advantage. Here’s how Pitchfork summed up the band’s debut record last summer.

Given his reedy tones and preoccupation with the past, it would be easy to compare RAA to Neutral Milk Hotel (the death-haunted lyrics of horn-studded “Luciana” make it the track most easily confused for a lost Jeff Mangum opus). But with more intensely vigorous drumming, more obviously personal lyrics, and a more blatant interest in glossy electro-pop, Edenloff’s band carves out their own niche. It is one that masterfully blends the masculine and the feminine, the refined and the coarse, the dark and the bright.