Royal Canoe Premieres “Exodus of the Year” Video

Royal Canoe Premieres "Exodus of the Year" Video

Royal Canoe has premiered a new video for “Exodus Of The Year.” Directed by Matt Rankin, the video was shot in the band’s hometown of Winnipeg. “I don’t know if this is true of other cities, but for some weird reason Winnipeggers have been bombarded for the past four decades by business-driven propaganda campaigns which aim to boost our hometown pride, promote tourism and economic growth. Each successive campaign is even more desperate and embarrassing than the last and they all fail, because they insist upon such a fake and whitewashed image of Winnipeg”, explains Rankin. “For the ‘Exodus’ video, we wanted to warp the cinematic vocabulary of these obsolete Winnipeg tourism filmstrips and create a kind of subversive travelogue about Winnipeg that is truly meaningful to us. The thing I love about ‘Exodus of the Year’ is that, both musically and lyrically, it really sounds like the Winnipeg we carry around in our hearts. It’s both sad and beautiful, frustrated and triumphant. For the video, we wanted to walk this fine line between the ironic and the earnest, as all us Winnipeggers must do every day.”

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 (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. Their fearlessness about using whatever they feel like is grounded, not in recklessness, but in a decisive confidence.

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. For 2013, the main act was releasing their full-length album, Today We’re Believers, with L.A.’s Roll Call Records and Toronto’s Nevado Records.

They have cited their hometown as a core influence for their work, in particular, Winnipeg’s extreme perpetual cycle through euphoric summers under gigantic prairie skies, to near-debilitating winters that instill their own intense, almost aggressive energy into the psyche. While the 2012 EPs feel more consistently located in hot open spaces, more about floating in strangers’ backyard pools without them knowing and biking all sweaty down roads that don’t actually end, “Today We’re Believers” leans more heavily into urban side of things, cruising the downtown core at night with streetlights fractured and smeared by frost patterns on the windows. The full cycle is balanced out.

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 light, and you feel some actual warmth on those pasty, vitamin-D deprived limbs and all they want to do, suddenly, is move.

Tour Dates

Jul 25-27 – Guelph, Canada – Hillside Festival
Aug 1-3 – Montreal, Canada – Osheaga
Aug 8-10 – Regina, Canada – Regina Folk Festival
Sept 13 – Clearwater, MB @ Harvest Moon Festival
Sept 30 – Regina @ The Exchange ^
Oct 1 – Saskatoon @ The Capitol ^
Oct 2 – Edmonton @ Pawn Shop ^
Oct 3 – Red Deer @ Bo’s Bar & Grill^
Oct 4 – Calgary @ Republik ^
Oct 7 – Kelowna @ The Habitat ^
Oct 9 – Victoria @ Lucky Bar ^
Oct 10 – Seattle @ Chop Suey *
Oct 11 – Vancouver @ Imperial *^
Oct 12 – Portland @ Doug Fir *
Oct 15 – San Francisco @ The Independent *
Oct 16 – Los Angeles @ El Rey Theatre *
Oct 17 – San Diego @ Casbah *
Oct 18 – San Diego @ Casbah *
Oct 19 – Phoenix @ Pub Rock
Oct 22 – St Louis @ The Demo
Oct 24 – Guelph @ E Bar %
Oct 25 – Ottawa @ Maverick’s %
Oct 27 – Kingston @ Clark Hall Pub %
Oct 28 – London @ Call the Office %
Oct 29 – Toronto @ Lee’s Palace %
Oct 30 – Montreal @ Sala Rossa %
Oct 31 – Quebec City @ Le Pantoum %
Nov 6 – Burlington @ HIgher Ground *
Nov 7 – Burlington @ Higher Ground *
Nov 9 – Boston @ Paradise *
Nov 11 – Philadelphia @ Boot & Saddle
Nov 13 – Columbus @ Rumba Club
Nov 14 – Chicago @ The Beat Kitchen
Nov 15 – Minneapolis @ 7th Street Entry