Monday, March 14, 2011

Concert Review - The Rural Alberta Advantage at Rock N Roll Hotel, Washington DC 3/13/11


"It's so nice to see a sold out sign when you roll into town," Nils Edenloff bantered in between songs to a packed house of 400 people. And though a little bit behind schedule (opening band Pepper Rabbit brought its Keane-esque rock out about 30 minutes late), they put on an incredible show.

Pushing through most of the songs from their latest release Departing (an album we very much like), everything sounded more full. Edenloff's voice didn't sound as thin as it sometimes can on the record. Paul Barwatt's drumming was even more ferocious and Amy Cole's multi instrumenting even more pronounced.

Getting the famously not dancey DC set to dance is always a problem, but as the show heated up and encouraged by Edenloff's proddings ("I think this is a dancey song" he said of Frank A/B, a song about a deadly rock slide, so WTF), head nodding eventually turned to bouncing and pogoing. A woman in front of me was writhing like a pole dancer, so whatever gets you going I guess.

The highlight though was for the final encore song, when the band came into the audience and closed out with an acoustic performance of Good Night. Powerful to say the least, I heard lots of people muttering "shit" or "Holy fuck" as the walked out. Couldn't agree more.

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