Today We're Believers

Canada's Royal Canoe gained considerable critical ground by releasing several EPs before its debut album, Today We’re Believers. Here, the six-piece group from Winnipeg, Manitoba, breaks out the samplers and, one assumes, some conventional instruments to create a mix designed to be heard on headphones or at gatherings, where the sounds take on a supernatural quality. The falsettos guiding “Today We’re Believers,” “Hold on to the Metal," and “Exodus of the Year” match the keyboard lines, which give way to curious stretches of ambient sound that somehow hold things together. “Bathtubs,” with its ensemble vocals, chiming keyboard notes, and tight, nearly danceable beats, demands to be a single. But there’s something about the group’s artistic curiosity and avant-garde quality that suggests Royal Canoe intends this music to be heard as one long chess match in sound.