It’s official: The Rural Alberta Advantage is back! After taking three years to put together their latest album Mended With Gold, the group out of Toronto has returned with their straight-forward yet emotionally deep indie rock sound they’ve been known for since their debut back in 2005. The extra time that the band took to create this record can immediately felt as each song feels like a polished hammer against the heart, similar to their breakout album Hometowns. As a result, Mended With Gold was featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered list for top albums released in September.

That’s not all though. Also weaving this album together with an eye towards their live show, the band is about to wrap out their North American tour tomorrow night at The Sinclair alongside their Canadian brethren July Talk before taking a short break and moving onto the European leg of their tour. Before that eventful night, frontman Nils Edenloff took some time to chat with us over the phone about The Rural Alberta Advantage’s new album and what they’re looking forward to when they play at The Sinclair.

Allston Pudding: After listening to the new album, I noticed two running themes that is kind of new for The Rural Alberta Advantage: fear and running away.

Nils Edenloff: I think there was a lot of things that were going through my life at the time. I went through the ending of a fairly long relationship. Just dealing with the realization that something might be ending, but, after the fact, better things can come from loss, from the things that don’t completely defeat you. I think those are primarily the two things that are running through the record is that fear of the unknown but realizing that good things come from sadness.

AP: That being said, I really liked how managed to circle back to that constant theme that’s been prevalent in all your albums: love and your different interpretations of that.

NE: Yeah, exactly. That’s the sort of music I’ve always been drawn to: emotional, very personal music, but not too overly heavy.

AP: Another constant I recognized was a nod back to your roots in Alberta with “Vulcan, AB”.

NE: It’s in reference to a really Christian town called Vulcan. It was actually called that, even before Star Trek. But after the Star Trek thing happened, they kind of ran with it and built their own Enterprise. It’s a very vivid image. So, I really like the play of that with the whole song about a dusty old town with nothing really much in it besides this Enterprise. So I went with the Star Trek theme and used it as a backdrop for another story about growing up and trying to find yourself.

AP: You guys have been outside of Alberta and living in Toronto for some time now. How do you feel that has affected your songwriting?

NE: Well, I think, growing up in Alberta, there’s always going to be a sense of that’s where my home is. All my family still lives there. At some point, it’s always going to creep into the music that I’m writing. The “Canadian-ness” is always going to come out where you’re obsessed with the land and geography and the weather. Stuff like that. It comes out whether I’m based in Alberta or not. I think it’s kind of a quintessentially Canadian thing to be obsessed with those sort of things. You never know when a song is going to end or where it’s going to lead you. But at the end of the day, you can’t take the Alberta out of the boy I guess. With these songs, there’s a certain aspect of Toronto creeping in, but all these things are whatever you read into more or less.

AP: With this album, it feels like there’s much more input from the other members of the band. Was that intentional?

NE: That’s something we definitely wanted to do: to try and make it more collaborative. Everyone had a chance to feed in their opinions and their ideas. We demoed everything to make sure we have a better sense of the songs when we went into the studio. It’s something we tried to address and I’m glad it comes out. We didn’t want to sound like a solo-project with loud drumming. I feel like that’s always been our style, but it was definitely something we were trying to target more with this record.

AP: It’s been a little bit since you’ve been on tour. How does it feel so far?

NE: It feels really great. There’s a lot of places we haven’t been to in three and a half years, so it’s been really awesome to get people out there again and get excited. I think if anything touring has hammered on the fact that we have to do this again soon. It’s inspiring us to get back into the groove, get home and, after a little bit of downtime, push forward.

AP: You’ve been to Boston/Cambridge a couple of times now. Is there anything in particular you’re looking forward to?

NE: Boston’s been really great to us. We played The Middle East last time we came there. We’re really excited. I think we’re doing the opposite of what we did last time. Last time we started in Boston, so it was the first show of the entire tour. We were still getting our feet and getting into the groove of it, whereas this’ll be the last show. So we’ll be really buzzing. There will be that end of tour excitement. Kind of like a homecoming show, but not quite.

AP: I know this time around you brought another Toronto act, July Talk, with you. How has it been like touring with them?

NE: Really great. They’ve been on the road quite a bit, so they’ve got their act together. It’s pushed us to up our stage presence a bit. They are performers and they’ve got a great delivery, so it’s been good to push us to give even more.

AP: Did you know them before the tour?

NE: No, we just met them. But they’ve been really pro.

AP: I actually recently saw Stars and The New Pornographers are coming next week. It feels like a fun coincidence that all these Canadian acts are putting stuff out and touring at around the same time.

NE: Yeah, everybody has their own timeframe. I guess it’s a good time to be touring. A lot of Canadians want to be heading further south to avoid the cold that is more or less impending. It’s kind of coincidental that it works out that way.

AP: Are there any other Canadian acts that you wish would put something together?

NE: I don’t know if Constantines made it down to the States, but they just got back together. They’re a great act from Toronto area. They broke up, but I think they’re getting back together for a reunion tour for one of their records. Royal City would be another one, but Jim Guthrie’s pretty busy writing music for different things. I don’t know if Alvvays has made it down to the Boston area, but they’re based out of Toronto now. I just love their new record.

AP: Yeah, they were just here not too long ago.

NE: They actually played at DC the same night we did. They’re really great.