The Rural Alberta Advantage The Rise & the Fall LP (Opaque Gray Vinyl)

The Rise & the Fall is the fifth studio album from 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).

"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 a culmination of navigating songwriting through forced Zoom meetings, trading files of song ideas over email, managing rehearsals in borrowed warehouses that allowed for more personal space, and proving that the specialness of the band and their songs could only be found with them all together in one room and especially on stage. Getting back to live performances across North America one small tour leg at a time in 2022 gave The RAA back the chance to rework, cancel and perfect these songs and bring them back home into studios around Toronto for recording with Gavin Gardiner (All Day Coconut). For the first time, the band focused on writing and recording a few songs at a time, taking their tradition of road-testing new music to a whole new level of real-time collaboration with their fans. Over the past couple of years, some of the music has been shared in real time in the form of multiple singles ("CANDU," "Plague Dogs") and The Rise EP released in 2022.