Acclaimed percussive folk-rock trio The Rural Alberta Advantage (The RAA) return today with a new single, “Plague Dogs” via Saddle Creek/Paper Bag Records, in advance of upcoming U.S. tour dates kicking off February 23 in Chicago, with support from Georgia Harmer [all dates below]. A video for “Plague Dogs” premiered earlier today via FLOOD. Watch + share via YouTube.
Discussing “Plague Dogs”, guitarist/vocalist Nils Edenloff shared , “Being a child of the 80’s the movie ‘Watership Down’ was long ago seared into my brain, and it was in 2019 that I came across one of Richard Adams’ other novels ‘Plague Dogs’. Having read ‘Watership Down’ and ‘Shardick’ when I first moved to Toronto, I found myself drawn to ‘Plague Dogs’, and found the title creeping into a song we were playing around with in early 2020.
The song doesn’t end up following the events of the novel in any way, but it underscores the specific time frame that we started to work on this song. The feelings of dread, uncertainty and isolation that I felt while reading the novel, along with the eerily similar feelings around early on in the pandemic are so tightly coupled with this song that it all feels like one for me.”
“Plague Dogs” was workshopped live over the band’s sold out Canadian tour through the Fall before returning home to record, and follows their continued efforts to record and release new music in real time as the year progresses. The song’s accompanying video features live performance footage from the band’s sold out hometown show at Danforth Music Hall at the end of November.
The new single follows last year’s six-song collection The Rise EP including the single
“CANDU,” which garnered praise from Stereogum, Under the Radar, CBC Music, Exclaim, amongst others.
The upcoming U.S. tour includes a few rescheduled performances, along with new markets the band has not hit in some years. Banwatt, Edenloff and Cole will bring their thundering drums, hammered keys, furious acoustics and crystalline harmonies back to the fans, as they continue to roadtest new music in the works.
