Royal Canoe
Something Got Lost Between Here and the Orbit
Reviewed by: Ziggy Merritt
Debuting back in 2010, Winnipeg outfit Royal Canoe has done well for themselves in six short years. Two prior full-lengths of vocally adventurous indie pop as well as tours alongside Bombay Motorcycle Club and Alt-J have made them a staple in the prolific Canadian indie-sphere. With their latest album, Something Got Lost Between Here and the Orbit, they’ve taken a step into the avant-garde. Touched with notes of ’90s era trip-hop and art rock that might make St. Vincent envious, Royal Canoe’s third album is easily their most daring.
Remaining consistently strong is their aforementioned vocals which are no less dynamic here. Accented by a heavy element of percussion throughout, the album is often at its best when it keeps to that simple formula. Their tracks “Walk Out on the Water” and “Living a Lie” represents these traits best. The former sources a bouquet of rich, ethnic and ambient percussion that speaks to the years of constant touring. “Walk Out on the Water” is ultimately a song about metamorphosis, something plainly stated by their metaphor of a butterfly stretching out its wings for the first time.
With “Living a Lie” there’s authentic soul to match the dreamy textures of bass, percussion, and brass. It’s a ballad on longing and distance with smooth and sensual vocals to match. But where these two tracks authenticate the band’s proclivity for smartly constructed trip-hop indulgence, some of the later cuts venture too far into the abstract. One of the bigger culprits comes in “Love You Like That” which does away with the harmonic vocal delivery in favor of an overly repetitive chorus and a confused electronic production. Throughout Something Got Lost there are kernels of great ideas spread throughout which, whether in samples of bombastic brass or tender acoustic, are fine on their own but brought into a cohesive whole prove distracting. Yet this inconsistent formula continues to prove itself successful in the insidious discord of “Holidays” as well as the subtle ambient groove of “How Long is Your Life.” Royal Canoe takes the disorder inherent in the layering of their third album and manages with trial, error, yet mostly success to turn the unintelligible into the beautiful.
Rating: Listenable
