Royal Canoe is a group of musicians on a mission to construct
ambitious, inventive music. The songs are thick with catchiness,
rich in rhythm and are consistently pushing against the
boundaries of pop music.
They spend almost every day in a shit-hole rehearsal space
writing hooks, singing through effects pedals, scrawling lyrics
on scraps of paper, and constructing heavy beats in odd time
signatures. They create samples by running conventional sounds
through unconventional pieces of gear, drumming on bathtubs and
garbage cans, listening to Big Boi and manipulating bits of old
records.
The band calls Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada home – the enigmatic
prairie city, which has served artists as both an abundant,
creative watering hole and a debilitating quagmire. The city's
mood swings from euphoric summers spent biking with beers,
fence-hopping residential pools and climbing abandoned roof-tops
to harsh, bitter winters that are countered first with defiance,
then self-loathing, then denial, then "you've got to be fucking
kidding me." Royal Canoe's songs are, in part, an effort to
make sense of the resentment and romanticism of the city's
divergent identities.
Royal Canoe released their EP,
Extended Play, in North
America on February 21.