A six-piece ensemble from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Royal Canoe give you everything, but on their own maniacally hybrid terms. It's one thing to reference a particular style, or even a range of styles. It's another thing entirely to grab huge handfuls of sounds from pretty much anywhere, throw them all together and come up with something both cohesive and totally distinctive -- something that also happens to ripple and crack with energy. This is what Royal Canoe does best.
Royal Canoe's dedication to crafting a seamless musical pastiche is obsessive. For live shows, they’d rather lug hundreds of pounds of keyboards, mixers and pedals across the continent than rely on lengthy backing tracks. They actually play every part, every time. And while their van is packed with hardware, much of that hardware is crammed full of widely-sourced samples and adoringly homemade sounds. Their fearlessness about using whatever they feel like is grounded in a decisive confidence.
If you really, absolutely had to reduce Royal Canoe to a single ‘thing’ you could say they catch the moment of explosive, blissful restlessness that hits you when a savage winter finally eases into spring, and you feel some actual warmth on those pasty, vitamin-D deprived limbs, and all they want to do, suddenly, is move.
