Last year, the Rural Alberta Advantage put out a new EP, The Rise, the Canadian band’s first release with keyboardist and vocalist Amy Cole since 2014. Today, they’re announcing a new album called The Rise & The Fall, which is made up of the six songs from The Rise plus seven more on The Fall side, including this past January’s “Plague Dogs.”

They’re sharing a new single, “Conductors,” from it now, which stemmed from Nils Edenloff’s amused experiments with artificial intelligence. “I did ask ChatGPT a couple of questions while working on this song and it let me know the health benefits of running, which wasn’t particularly groundbreaking,” he said. “But when I really dug in and asked, ‘Why am I afraid of writing?’ it provided no answer.” He continued:

I’ve been a fan of Adam Curtis’ documentaries for a while. I’m not sure if it’s the message, the archival footage or the soundtrack, or maybe it is a combination of the three, but there is something hypnotic and completely engrossing in his work that I love, and for me, it’s perfect to watch while on tour. Late last year when the world was getting swept up by ChatGPT and we were still spending a lot of time in the songwriting process, Paul [Banwatt] took no lack of joy in needling me, constantly prompting it to create lyrics in the style of ‘The Rural Alberta Advantage’. I guess being perpetually reminded that you could be easily replaceable, and that your job could eventually be farmed out artificially brought to mind a lot of the themes in Curtis’ documentaries and ‘HyperNormalisation’ especially.

I can say with total honesty that none of the lyrics that Paul coaxed from the AI made it onto the record, nor did any of the lines particularly move me. So I guess for now, good old fashioned sweat, pen to paper inspiration still won the day for us.

Watch the video for “Conductors” below.

The Fall TRACKLIST:
01 “Real Life”
02 “Plague Dogs”
03 “Our Youth”
04 “Lullaby”
05 “Conductors”
06 “Don’t Wake Up”
07 “FSHG”

The Rise & The Fall is out 10/6 via Saddle Creek (US) / Paper Bag (Canada/EU).