Chicago’s alternative rock leaders, The Canoes, are all about witty, twisted lyrics paired with puppy eyed, musical jaunts that fool you into believing their false hope for the future. ‘American English’ is a perfect track to demonstrate how this bands brutally honest assessment of cultural values can be distilled into a quaint system of interchangeable stanzas, rebounding off one another to create poetic bliss.
To quote the songs lines about it would read silly without the supporting atmosphere, but the general sentiment is- Fuck you, we’re American. It’s powerful for multiple reasons. In the first, it’s an acknowledgement of a long standing stereotype.It embraces and loves the insult. In the second, it’s completely ignorant, it is everything that the stereotype was built on.
It’s this duality, expressing itself repeatedly within their work, that makes The Canoes a band worth watching. You can get their latest single from The Snake.
- Dingus
“we speak American English, Fuck it if you don’t understand it.”
I like these guys. Very straight ahead.
AJ