Canasta sounded like one of Chicago’s best pop bands even before they made a record, and I loved their five-song EP, 2003’s Find the Time. Their debut full-length, the new We Were Set Up (Broken Middle C), doesn’t disappoint: leaning heavily on organ and strings, they work a melody the way a metal band works a riff, as both a signature and a weapon. The martial rhythm that opens the lead track, ‘Microphone Song,’ gives way to a gentler pace later in the album, with new melodic bubbles constantly rising up.

— Monica Kendrick, The Chicago Reader, November 18, 2005