Vinyl love: The Rural Alberta Advantage “Hometowns”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Rural Alberta Advantage
Album Title: Hometowns
Year released: 2009
Details: Black vinyl

The skinny: I saw The Rural Alberta Advantage live for the first time at Ottawa Bluesfest in 2010, before I had ever listened to any of their recordings. I was so impressed by their crazy blend of folk/country, punk, and simply wicked percussion, that I immediately afterwards sought out their debut album, “Hometowns”, and then, proceeded to see them live twice more in the span of the following year. The Toronto-based trio of Nils Edenloff, Amy Cole, and Paul Banwatt fast became a favourite of mine so when I found a copy of this debut album at the now-defunct Record Shaap, I quickly made it part of my collection. And this, in 2012, in my collections’s early days, back when it was in the single digits and before I had even purchased my turntable. I still spin this original, plain black pressing with regularity because it is simply an excellent collection of raw rockers.

Standout track: “Don’t haunt this place”