My Favourite Albums - Hometowns

Hometowns is the debut album from The Rural Alberta Advantage. Released in 2008 and then re-released in 2009 after the band signed with a new & bigger label.

The Rural Alberta Advantage, from here on out I'll just refer to them as The RAA, is a three piece Canadian band made up of Nils Edenloff, (guitar and vocals), Amy Cole, (backing vocals, keyboards and percussion), and Paul Banwatt (drums).

Amy Cole, Paul Banwatt & Nils Edenloff (l-r)

If you read the last installment of Sunday Music you'll have seen, and heard, Don't Haunt This Place from Hometowns. It's one of my favourite songs from the album but it's not necessarily representative of the whole album, at least musically. I'm not sure there is one song that's representative of the musical styles on the album.

 The Dethbridge in Lethbridge

Lyrically however the album covers the same ground regardless of the music. The songs are about longing for something lost. A man in Toronto looking back at his past in Alberta and writing about that. So the lyrics are about things lost. Things left behind. A simpler way of life that we have when we're younger; soon enough to be replaced by the more complicated adult world. And it's a world that can never be revisited. Even if you go back to those places you've changed even if the places haven't. It's nostalgia, the remembering of things we loved that are gone.

Four Night Rider

Of course the problem with nostalgia can be that it leads to a refusal to grow up. Always looking back at the past is the easiest way to miss the present. This is not a trap that I personally feel Hometowns fall into. It's not an album about nostalgia as much as it's an album about living. Partially of this comes from the lyrics but mostly I think it comes from Paul Banwatt's drumming. All three members of the band are skilled musicians worthy of praise and the band works together in a perfectly complimentary way. All that said; Banwatt may be the best drummer around at the moment. In my opinion he's certainly vying with The Bad Plus' Dave King for the title. His drumming is always flawless, always driving the band along but never straying to far ahead. It gives the album a much needed vitality.

Luciana

Nils Edenloff's vocals do somewhat sound like Jeff Magnum's. The RAA however aren't another band trying to be the next Neutral Milk Hotel; they are just uniquely themselves and Hometowns is the perfect, (I know I've over-used that word), and expression of that. In a world where it's easier to tear things down and make snarky, pithy comments, (something I am very guilty of) this is a sincere album by a sincere band. If there is one song that perfectly sums up this album it's In The Summertime. A song about the past, dealing with the present optimistically, and looking forward to the future. Driven along by Banwatt's heartbeat drumming accomponied by Amy Cole's keyboards and finishing off the song, and the album, with her vocals.

In The Summertime

Your music collection is a much poorer place without Hometowns.

My favourite albums - Juxtapose & listening to Tricky

If you've been reading the weekly Sunday Music posts you know that for the last few weeks I've been posting Tricky songs every week. The problem is, that's only one or two songs out of six I post on a Sunday. Here's a solution. It's moving a little too slowly for my liking. It's been a while since I've made a new entry in the My favourite album series. This is a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Today I'll be talking about Tricky's 1999 release, Juxtapose.

Juxtapose was released in 1999; the first album to not feature Martina Topley-Bird on vocals. It is, I think, a big step forward in Tricky's style. Maxinquaye was such an impactful album that all the albums that followed it felt like reactions to it. Not attempts to copy it or improve it necessarily. The albums that followed Maxinquaye were all good; I personally rate Pre-Millennium Tension very highly. None of them quite stepped out of the shadow that the masterpiece that is Maxinquaye cast.

Juxtapose does step away from it. It's an entirely different style of music. Maxinquaye is over the horizon and in the past.

Contradictive by Tricky

This is the sound of a more mature Tricky. No longer an artist worrying about the trip-hop label being hung on him; he decisevly moves away from mid-90's trip hop. There's an argument to be made that trip hop follows the direction Tricky sets on this album, that doesn't change the altered course Tricky lays down here.

For Real by Tricky

Some credit for the album must of course go to producers DJ Muggs & Dame Grease. DJ Muggs is Cypress Hills' DJ & producer and has worked with a lot of other bands and artists. Including, oddly enough, Simply Red and, most famously, House of Pain. Dame Grease is probably most well known for his production with DMX and Nas. There's an entirely different feel to this album than all the ones that went before and a lot of that must be down to the producers.

She Said by Tricky

All that said, this is still unmistakably a Tricky album. His vocals are still delivered with that characteristic low almost growling tone. His lyrics are down to earth and often poignant. It is a Tricky album and it is a great one.

My favourite albums - Different Class

Not long before I put this blog on hiatus, a phrase which implies a degree of planning that certainly did not exist, I had decided to do a series of posts about my favourite albums. It's still something I want to do, now I'm going to do it.

A few ground rules first:

I'll be choosing 99 albums. Obviously, this won't be a short term project.

I'm going to limit myself to three albums per band/solo artist. This is to avoid filling the list with just the discographies of my favourite bands and seek albums that I love rather than just come up with the easy answers.

I'm going to avoid Best Of albums with the exception of some older jazz and blues artists who didn't really record albums, just singles.

These albums are not in any ranked order, I'll just write about them in the order I want to.

That's it, let's move on to the first album, Different Class by Pulp.

Different Class came out in October 1995 in between 1994's His 'N' Hers and 1998's This Is Hardcore, two other albums that will eventually feature on this list. All three of those albums were nominated for the Mercury Prize and the three albums together, in my opinion at least, form a cohesive whole about changing views and experiences of life.

Back to Different Class. Even though His 'N' Hers broke Pulp through to mainstream success Different Class made them absolutely huge. As good as His 'N' Hers was, and I think it's a great album, Different Class improves significantly on it. There's a maturity to the songs. A sense that these aren't just kids anymore but reflective adults, looking backwards to the past and forward to the future as well as recognising the present. Different Class came out in the midst of Britpop, it is very much a Britpop album, but it's also much more. It's not just about the present, about modern life in 1990's Britain and when it does talk about those subjects it isn't just about the perils of the rat race or the fun to be had at parties and festivals. It has major themes of working class life and sex running through it. It is, as I've said, an album of people who have become adults and are starting to have adult worries.

Live Bed Show by Pulp

The most well known song from the album, and from Pulp's career, is of course Common People. A song that pretty perfectly sums up the album. A song about cultural tourism the song is Jarvis Cocker's definite statement, at least it seems to me, about the class system in Britain. All done in a way that is funny and never boring. It's also covered by William Shatner if you want a really weird experience.

Common People by Pulp 

At the heart of it all Common People is an album about identity and belonging. It doesn't lionise or demonise the culture it's part of, it never sneers at it or tries to excuse it. It's full of sarcasm, piss taking and self-awareness It's about belonging regardless of how valuable or not the thing you belong to is. It's about creating something of your own to belong to, about not being afraid of life or living it your way. Not better or worse than the alternative ways and cultures, but truly yours.

Mis-Shapes by Pulp