Thursday, Feb 5 THE RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE support tba 7 pm doors $25 Advance / $30 Door All Ages The Rural Alberta Advantage: The Rise & The Fall is the fifth studio album from award winning, charged folk-rock trio The Rural Alberta Advantage. It is the first album featuring the return of original band member, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Amy Cole alongside Paul Banwatt (drums) and Nils Edenloff (lead vocals, guitar, keyboard). Earlier this year, The RAA wrapped up a tour of the East Coast of Canada and were talking to a fan after the show, recalled Edenloff. “They said, ‘Your music makes me long for things I didn’t know I wanted.’” And that captures what I think we’re trying to do as a band.” The Rise & The Fall is 13 tracks, including songs from the band’s 2022 EP The Rise, as well as seven new songs, including the dreamy soundscapes of “Real Life,” synth-y singalongs of “Our Youth” and a live-off-the floor, one take recording of the heartfelt “FSHG.” Says Amy Cole, “The last couple of years really tested us as a band, and made us ask ourselves: Why do we want to make music right now? And I think the answer is that, when the three of us get together, something happens that we now know is rare and special. We made this record so we can share this feeling, and bring others into that experience with us.” All of our music is rooted in a certain amount of heart and honesty. The songs themselves come from a very earnest place and they are really extensions of who we are. Sometimes we hide those emotions with a lot of noise and sonic energy, while other times we leave them raw and bare. I see our albums more as diary entries, or snapshots in time and this one certainly fits that bill, says Edenloff. The Rise & The Fall is the product of the band’s navigating the pandemic and its aftermath: songwriting over Zoom meetings, collaborating on demos online, distanced rehearsals in borrowed warehouses, and never giving up on the hope that the day would finally come when the band could share new music on stage together again. Along with a few smaller tour runs in 2022, the band returned to the studio with Gavin Gardiner (Born Ruffians, The Wooden Sky, Evening Hymns). Piece by piece, they built The Rise, and are now excited to complete this chapter with the full-length culmination of this journey, The Rise & The Fall. The lead single from the 13-song collection, “Conductors,” is a rousing track dedicated to the universal question of why we run from the things we love.