I’m usually not one to care about vocals. Two of my favorite bands are Los Campesinos! and The Hold Steady, two bands with front men who were…let’s just say, not blessed with the greatest voices. This shows just how strange Nils Edenloff’s singing voice is. His name is pretty weird too, but that’s for another time.
I actually thought that I didn’t like The Rural Alberta Advantage after the first couple of songs. Edenloff assaulted my eardrums with a very strange–almost whiney–shout right off the bat. It took me a while to adjust and accept this screech that he calls a voice, but once I did, I realized how kick-ass this record is.
The Rural Alberta Advantage plays some good indie rock. I know that I’ve been saying that I’m getting tired of this genre a lot as of late, but I really got into Hometowns. They’re not doing anything too groundbreaking…you know how it’s hard to describe what exactly you like about something sometimes? Well I go through that every time I like a record for this blog. I’m having more trouble than usual with describing Hometowns, though. It’s just a bunch of songs about childhood, love, lost love — you know, the standard indie-topics. I guess it’s just really catchy. Does an album need to be anything else for someone to consider it good? I sure don’t think so.
Let’s go back to indie rock voices, because that’s something that I can actually write about without rambling too much. I think that people like me appreciate unconventional singers, mainly because they show that you don’t need to be special to start an awesome band. Anyone with solid ideas can make great music, regardless of vocal capabilities. That gives people like me hope, because people like me always dream of being in a band, even without any particular musical talents, or motivation to acquire such talents.
Swole Ear 
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