The Canoes

The Canoes formed in Chicago in 2007 with the merging of two bands: blues-oriented Wampeters and agoraphobic basement rockers Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash. The result has been a meditation on what it is to produce meaningful garage rock. Guitars murmur and build to down-strumming crescendo, drums beat raucously yet evenly, and voices emerge from turbid five-day-old rainwater that collects in street depressions and garage gutters. The Canoes' repertoire focuses on original song-writing, which ranges from a re-imagining of the story of the Grateful Dead ("Bob and Jerry") to a bizarre, non-linear commentary on American consumerism ("Pink Soccerballs"). But the band will occasionally cover canonical songs, originally: a country-fied version of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark," for instance. The Canoes' influences include the Replacements, Pavement, Neil Young, the Boss, Geoffrey Chaucer, Donald Barthelme, and the Kinks. The Canoes are Alex Teller, Elliott Teller, Rory MacPhail, and Sam Durkes.