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.

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 (very much like a voyager canoe, in fact) 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, in turn, crammed full of widely-sourced samples and adoringly homemade sounds.

In 2012 alone, Royal Canoe released two independent EPs, Extended Play and Purple & Gold. They took part in Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival, arranging and performing a portion of Beck’s Song Reader, an album released as sheet music and published by McSweeny’s.They also played nearly one hundred shows. For 2013, the main act (so far) is releasing their full-length album, Today We’re Believers, with L.A.’s Roll Call Records and Toronto’s Nevado Records.

Tracklisting

01. Today We’re Believers
02. Hold on to the Metal
03. Just Enough
04. Exodus of the Year
05. Bathtubs
06. Button Fumbla
07. Show Me Your Eyes
08. Birthday
09. Nightcrawlin
10. Stemming
11. Light
12. If I Had a House

06.08 – Columbus, OH – Newport Music Hall*
06.09 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club*
06.11 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer*
06.13 – New York, NY – Webster Hall*
06.15 – Winnipeg, MB – Winnipeg Jazz Festival
06.17 – Chicago, IL – Metro / Smart Bar*
06.18 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue*
06.20 – Dallas, TX – House Of Blues*
06.21 – Houston, TX – House Of Blues*
06.22 – Austin, TX – Stubb’s Bar-B-Q / Waller Creek Amphitheatre*
06.24 – Englewood, CO – Gothic Theatre*
06.26 – Los Angeles, CA – El Rey Theatre*
07.05 – Toronto, ON – Toronto Urban Roots Festival w/ The Sadies
07.06 – Montreal, QC – Quai des Brumes
07.25 – 07.28 – Calgary, Canada – Calgary Folk Festival
10.22 – Ottawa, ON – National Arts Centre / Centre national des Arts

*with Tricky

http://royalcanoe.com