Frank AB - Rural Alberta Advantage

This is a really catchy song about the disaster in Frank, Alberta. Here is a Wiki Link about the disaster.

Frank, Alberta is also the band's hometown. They have a couple of really good songs.

Here is the song:



Here are the lyrics:

My love, I will hold on to your touch
'Til there's nothing left of us
Save you from this life

In the cold weight, in the Rockies touch
Won't take away our love
Save you from this life

And I'll hold, I'll hold on to your touch
'Til there's nothing left of us
Save you from this life

And I'll hold, I'll hold on to your touch
Till they find the bones of us
Save you from this life

And under the rubble
Of the mountain that tumbled
I'll hold you forever
I'll hold you forever

And under the rubble
Of the mountain that tumbled
I'll hold you forever
I'll hold you forever

And they'll build up another
On the bodies of our brothers
And I'll love you forever

Its one of those love songs that reads as a normal catchy love sung until you know the background. Are these husband and wife buried together? A parent holding the hand of a buried child as it dies? A dream of dead loved ones haunting a survivor a few weeks after the landslide?

A good disaster tale reminds us of how long and hard humanity has struggled against the elements and our own hubris to achieve a little bit of civilization and who quick that can be snuffed out. The line "they'll build up another / On the bodies of our brothers" is a good summary of civilization.

The problem with wars and terrorist tales is that they are too human-focused, whereas natural disasters place us against the context of amoral, unthinking nature. The first is more American, the second more Canadian. McCarthy's The Road begins with (seemingly, he's vague on it) a natural disaster of extinction proportions, but the dangers are all other humans afterwards. Yet the sentiment is similar to the song - two people clinging desperately together as the blackness swallows them up. It makes for powerful emotions - so I distrust it - but I'm not immune either...

The Road (2006) wrote:I think maybe they are watching, he said. They are watching for a thing that even death cannot undo and if they do not see it they will turn away from us and they will not come back

This song is about those "things that even death cannot undo".