In the follow up to their Polaris Prize nominated full-length debut, Firecracker/Cloudglow, Cannon Bros. have continued to find their stride with their new LP, Dream City. 

In Dream City, Cannon Bros. elicit feelings of 90’s alt-pop-rock nostalgia, of unbridled youth, feelings without consequences and a playful openness towards the future. 

The best moments of their music remain when the band successfully intermixes their frolicking power pop thrust with milked melody and toasty harmonics.

Like their first LP, Cannon Bros. haven’t forgotten the importance of arrangement and balance. 

Dream City is host to 19 short songs fit into 39 dense minutes. Before I listened to the album I saw this and was a little uncertain as to whether this would be a good thing or not. I found it to be the former. 

The Winnipeg duo of Cole Woods and Alannah Walker have improved their songwriting and production with this album, with hookier riffs, more emphatic earworms and dreamier melodies. 

The album’s single “Can’t Sleep”, features jangly, chiming guitar strums atop tumbling, tromping drums, overlaid by Woods and Walker’s glistening vocal harmonics, as a grungy guitar line creeps its way in near the end to lead you out of the song. 

Or there’s “July”, a song whose wobbling and weaving guitar is coupled with pummeling, propulsive percussion and a chirpy, bubble-gum chorus with push-and-pull momentum and the ability to burrow its way into your mind for days. 

“Nowhere” opens up with sparse, shimmering guitar, fluttering, airy drums and Woods’ melancholic, adrift vocals that lead way to a crisp guitar melody that’s euphonious and heady enough to be straight out of the books of dream pop. 

Cannon Bros. have found a knack for creating songs with big sounds from minimal instruments, and Dream City provides no lack of this. Although there are some songs throughout the album that stand out less than others, there’s something in Dream City that any alt-pop-rock enthusiast can catch on to. 

- Chris Bryson

Published in Volume 70, Number 5 of The Uniter (October 8, 2015)