The Rural Alberta Advantage, or The RAA as they’re often known are a Canadian Indie-Rock band with a loyal following here in the UK. Their great vocal harmonies and simple songwriting are what makes their music so unique. After their awesome performance at The Great Escape, I had a chat with them in their lovely hire car.

The RAA are Paul Banwatt, Amy Cole and Nils Edenloff.

Mark – How long are you guys in the UK for?

Paul – We landed in London, played the Camden Crawl, played Manchester, and then we went over to France for 5 or 6 days. Then we were supposed to do a show in Spain but we got caught in the ash cloud. It kinda sucked as we were supposed to do a festival there, but we’re back for all the London stuff.

M – Must be quite big shows for you guys in London?

Paul – Oh yeah it’s great, everywhere we’ve been playing has been good…

Nils – …One of the many highlights was to play at the Royal Albert Hall. Like, not in the main room but in a side room, but we’re still there. We totally still snuck into the main room and watched them rehearsing the classical Brit Awards….

Amy – …It was unbelievable, we’re sitting in box seats drinking beers. The only different in it was everyone was wearing jeans and hoodies, but everything else was so classical and refined.

M – This is your first time in the UK, have you had a good reception?

P – I feel like the response has been pretty awesome….

A …Definitely! It’s always been beyond our expectations. This last year of our lives has been amazing, touring the United States and trying to build our record there. Every time we go to a new city we’ve been surprised to find a pocket of really fervent fans of ours who are really into the record. Here it was even more unexpected because our record was even really out until now, so to come and have what just happened is really exciting….

N – the music world has got a lot smaller, as it gets huge its gotten smaller. Everyone in the world knows your music. Last night a guy was telling us about all these people in Johannesburg who are into our record, and how they plug our music. That’s something that would never had happened 10 years ago…

M – Yeah, you can just share anything in an instant now…

A – It’s great?! (laughs) We’re one of the bands who is benefiting from this new world of music sharing. You could be on the flip side, and be Metallica getting angry when people download your music.

M – For some bands it’s pretty fundamental to their success.

P – Yeah I mean I don’t think we would be where we are. From the get go we’ve always been of the belief that the music just needs to get out to people. For the longest time we had an EP and at shows we would sell it as ‘pay what you can’, and we’d just give it to people, tell them to share it with their friends, come out to a show if you like it. It’s really important for bands to be receptive to their fans, and believe that if you create something good, it will spread. For a long time we had it out on our own, and we didn’t want to have the wrong person put it out. We had something we believed in.

M – Was this whole process of putting it out yourself to begin with important for you then?

A – I like how we’ve done it, this kind of grass-roots thing that grew organically. We were able to find something that fits with us, we don’t feel uncomfortable. It still feels like we’re doing it on our own terms, but we have great people supporting us.

M – Are you planning on coming back over here soon?

P – We hope to. Umm, I think there has been some talk of coming back in the fall, but right now there are so many things our manager is looking after… (laughs)

N – It’s the kinda thing where you can’t book second tour before your first tour has gone OK.

A – ’Yeah, about the fall, we hate you…’(laughs)

N – Now this has gone as well as it has, hopefully…

M – What’s the plan for the next 6 months? Touring? Are you still writing?

P – This summer, probably in July we’re going to start recording the new record. We’ve got a bunch of stuff that we’ve been touring, 6 or 7 songs that we’ve earmarked for the album. It’s just a matter of gaining the time for the 3 of us to flesh out the other songs. We’ve got the ideas but we need to actually break them down and make them work our songs work for us.

M – Do you get much time to practise on tour?

A – Only if we really need it, and we seek it out…

M – Is it like if you have a bad show you’ll have a practise?

A – We never rehearse for shows anymore because we’ve been playing these songs for several months now, but back when the new songs were really new songs we reheased them…

N – We have rehearsals if there is new material that we want to get into the set on the fly.

M – Do you find it gets monotonous playing live/touring?

A – I won’t lie, this year I have missed home increasingly (laughs), but at the same time, a show like tonight? That will never get old, I could play songs like that to an audience like that forever.

P – I think so much of playing shows is not just playing shows and going through the motions. There is so much of that interaction with the audience. If the audience wasn’t giving that energy back, yeah it would get boring. We try to give as much of ourselves as we can, and the audience respond to that. It keeps it exciting, it surprisingly hasn’t got boring.

After talk about driving in the US and Canada, we got onto the discussion of London driving….

N – Everything is so close here. In London, you don’t see a highway for like a hour! (laughs)

A – We’re like ‘so does London end at some point?’…

N – I’ve never appreciated our GPS until now. That things a genius for getting through these roads. (laughs)

On a sweltering day in Brighton just before their performanc later that night at The Great Escape, I was lucky enough to catch up with Leeds-based hardcore rockers Pulled Apart By Horses. Their single, brilliantly titled Back To the Fuck Yeah is out on the 14th June 2010, along with their hotly anticipated album on the 21st. We chatted album, keeping the energy and future plans.

After much talk of staying in ‘shed-rooms’ (bedrooms made from sheds, which sound like a great idea) and bands getting pissed with press people, we got down to it.

Mark (TNC) – How would you describe your sound?

PABH – Well you’re the journalist! You figure it out! (laughs)

M – I’ve read some interviews and they describe your sound in some odd ways…Indie/Disco-influenced Punk.

PABH – That’s kind of it really….Indie Punk Disco Hardcore…err..people come up with all kinds of terms really.

M – Posi-core? As in positive hardcore? I’ve heard that..

James – Yeah that’s good I like that. Legacy core? (laughs) I think the main aim of what we were doing was, to make some kind of music that we didn’t really know what it sounded like, or we’d not really heard it before..

M – You didn’t focus on being like ‘that’s what we need to sound like’.

Tom – Yeah that’s the thing, cos we’re all into completely different bands. So the case is, when you get a band and they’re all listening to the same bands they’re just basically gonna sound like the main band that they love or whatever. But with us guys we’ve got such a varied taste in music and stuff that it’s kinda just a big mash of everything really.

Rob – When we first started out it was rigid. James’s idea was to sound like Jesus Lizard. It totally ended sounding nothing like that which is great! The music just took on its own life and its own thing rather than us trying to force it to be anything.

Tom – We’ll write a song and it will sound completely different to anything else. I’ve got a new song that sounds like Status Quo mixed with Hot Snakes (laughs).

Rob – I turned round in practise like ‘is that Status Quo?’ and you just went ‘nope it’s the new song!’

(Laughs)

James – We’ve got a song called The Lighthouse, and it’s basically Bulls On Parade backwards (laughs), literally it is Bulls On Parade backwards.

M – So your album is coming out in June, with the single just before it, what formats it going to be in?

Rob – It’s 7” and digital download called Back To The Fuck Yeah.

Tom – We’re launching it with a video that we directed ourselves, and it’s basically like a little homage to Evil Dead. It’s got us being dragged through the woods, all the shakey camera shots. I think we got it spot on, actually.

M – That sounds pretty sweet.

Tom – It’s a fun song.

James – Yeah it fits the song really well.

Tom – There’s a big uplifting chorus, and when it kicks in, it’s just the word ‘YEAAAHHHH’, and as soon as it kicks in we get dragged back.

M – You re-recorded some of the tracks for the album?

James – Yeah the songs have changed since we recorded them a while ago.

Tom – If you listen to the Meat Balloon vinyl it sounds like you’ve got it on the wrong speed.

M – Were you worried in the recording process that you’d lose the energy you have when you play live?

Rob – Yeah that was the main idea was to capture that. We did it in a really short period of time, and we stayed in this small converted barn in Bridlington, getting cabin fever and going crazy for a week. All of thats gone into the album.

Tom – To do the vocals we were like swigging whisky and just trying to get that sound that you’d get when we’re in the middle of tour or something.

Rob – That was priority number 1. It’s got to capture how we are as a live band.

M – It couldn’t be a polished thing.

Tom – We just had these visions of getting these reviews saying ‘awesome live band, but the album doesn’t do justice’. There’s even a bit on ‘High Five’ where my guitar lead drops out just before I came in, and if you listen closely you can hear it go ‘bruhhh’ and plug back in.

James – We didn’t want to go in for a month of something and analyse each track.

Tom – We often ended up going with later takes, as the first ones were too neat.

M – You’re working with Transgressive, has it been good so far?

Rob – Yesssss.

Tom – They’re like a DIY label that have stepped up a notch. It was important to meet the people and go in with people we could trust more than anything.

James – It’s like you get these deals put on the tabel with the big names and you think ‘why do they want to do it’?

Tom – It’s still a learning curve.

M – What’s the plan for the future then?

James – Well album out in june, then first proper headline tour. Then it’s gonna be festivals, and this time we’re doing a couple of European ones too. Then they’ll be another single from the album, and another tour, probably longer…

Tom – And trying to cram in writing the next one somewhere amongst all that chaos.

M – Are you worried about the second album at all?

Rob – No not all all. Bring it on.

Tom – I don’t really care, we’ve got to where we got to by doing what we enjoy doing.

Rob – This first album is our like ‘Bleach’ album, we did it quickly for no money etc. Hopefully the next one will be like ‘Nevermind’ (Laughs).

Tom – And then I’ll shoot myself.

Rob – We can’t afford a shotgun….

James – I’ve already started using herion…(laughs)

This year at The Great Escape we had the chance to hear Ian Hogarth talk not only about Songkick, the company that he set up with two friends, Peter and Michelle, but also about his broader plans for his business. Rightly so Ian was named UK Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year 2010.

Songkick aims to ensuring that you, the music lover, is never left in the dark when a band, musician, or concert comes to your city. This is pretty innovative stuff and the more Ian spoke during the PRS (Will Page) & Songkick talk before a panel discussion, the more your saw the passion and the need for such a website.  Ian won £5,000 which he aims to spend developing Songkick in China.

Their site aims to give music lovers more than just a simple listing of events it aims, or its goal, is for Songkick to become the main place people come to talk about their past concerts, singers they loved and love, and new music.  The talk has some interesting facts which struck me as a little worrying.  The main thing I picked up on was that though some shows say they are sold out around 35% of shows (40% this year) remained unsold.  Songkick, Ian says, will let you know when a band or concert is coming to your areas and give you a list of the ticket vendors giving you the best price.  It has to be made clear here that Songkick does not sell tickets for events.

Songkick has already started to get people pretty excited  with 1.3 million people using the site and some great stories of past shows like a 1982 Ramones show.  This is a great initiative and is one that is clearly going to make it easy for people to know more about live music in their areas as well as come to a place dedicated for them to share their experiences.

One the financial side Songkick make their money from getting a commission from the sale of a ticket as Songkick would have directed a sale to the ticket seller that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

In just three years The Great Escape has become Europe’s leader festival in bringing new music from all corners of the world to over 30 unique venues in Brighton. The New Current’s music editor, Mark Allen, was lucky to get to see the guys live and they recently sent us some answers to our ever popular (and world famous) email interview. All questions answered by Daniel Balk.

-So how did people find you in the UK? Is it the first time you’ve been over here?

This was the first proper UK tour we’ve ever done. We had a great time and found that the crowds were always in high spirits, ready to have a good time.

- Who did you play with on the tour? Were they good fun to tour with?

We toured with the Futureheads and Dutch Uncles. They both showed us around the UK and we couldn’t have picked two nicer bands to share the stage with. The two bands were also into having a pint or two, which was nice.

- Any tour antics you wish to share? Memorable shows?

The most memorable show was our last show in London at Club NME at Koko. It was such a beautiful venue and the crowd was just insane. We love to see everyone dancing and jumping around. At our first show at Camden Crawl, we thought the floor was going to break in because the crowd was jumping up and down so high. That scared me for a moment, also because my mic was moving around and I couldn’t get every word in.

- You’re debut album comes out in a few months in the US, are you excited? Is there plans for a worldwide release?

We are very excited to have our debut album released, it’s a dream come true. Our worldwide date isn’t set yet, but we will definitely be releasing a full length in Europe!

- Was it a fun writing process?

Creating the songs is always the most fun process for us as a band. I usually will come into the rehearsal space with a melody or chord change and we will all orchestrate the songs together which can lead into the late hours of the night or early morning. When a song works, there is no better feeling.

- Anyone you wish to mention as inspiration to your music?

Buddy Holly, The Ramones and Sam Cooke are a few of our many inspirations.

- Are you planning on coming back to the UK or visiting Europe once the album comes out?

We are already planning on coming back to the UK and Europe, it was such a blast. Check out our website for updates, we will definitely be back!