Before acts foreign & domestic head to Austin for South-by-Southwest (QRO preview), they hit up New York City for the Lower East Side’s New Colossus Festival, Wednesday-Sunday, March 6th-10th.
M for Montreal showcase @ Baker Falls
Sasha Cay
A four-piece jangly dream pop outfit with plaintive country notes took the stage as the rain outside began to fall in earnest. Sasha Cay in front of a room full of wet dogs. The fronter reeled off stage banter that elaborated on intra-Montreal bagel feud discourse. Not the sort of thing that local yokels were going to immediately grasp, but it was an evening for cultural learnings of Montreal for make benefit glorious nation of Canada. The band recently dropped a live-ish album, called Live at You First. The record was recorded at a studio called You First, which would normally qualify it as a studio album, not a live album. But there are no rules north of the border.
Housewife
The three-piece Housewife self-identified as angst rockers rocking angstly. Fair enough. But there were plenty of candy-coated, pop-forward moments to go with the social and political commentary animating the lyrics. Out of Toronto, not Montreal, which is 100% allowed at the M Is For Montreal because the showcase is just about having a rocking good time (though points deducted for a crowd of musicians not being able to muster up a spare capo when the Housewife guitarist was in need). This band just met their drummer on the day of the show? Must be a new drummer. No indication that the old drummer was murdered and hastily buried in a shallow grave somewhere in the forgotten glades of Rouge National Urban Park. But no evidence to the contrary either.
Winona Forever
Medium tempo bouncy lounge rock was the order of the day from Vancouver’s Winona Forever. The four-piece used every inch of the three mics set up in front of the two guitarists and one bassist. By the process of elimination, does the drummer have a terrible voice? Evidence of absence is absence of evidence. Please refer to the logical principle at work above in the case of the murdered Housewife drummer. Extra points for the patented forehead-to-forehead stage choreography, which demands no further description – you’ll have to see it live. The band has a new album on the way called Sound Argument. Check it out.
Hippie Hourrah
A psychedelic Shangri-La in five parts: a double stack of keys, an electric twelve-string, an acoustic guitar, medieval lute-looking bass, and drums for kilometers. It’s Hippie Hourrah. Is that a Canadian spelling of ‘hurrah’? Extra points straight out of the gate to this band for the French lyrics. Shades of Evolfo, The Paperhead, The 13th Floor Elevators. This was a band of jammers jamming jam music. Not the stratosphere soloing type à la Phish or Garcia Peoples. It was more of a subterranean excavation, building the jam from the bottom up, with krautrock accents that strung the energy out to infinity and beyond. The crowd was digging it, and the band wanted to play one more in their final minute (the great unbudgeable fest schedule), but didn’t have a 60-second song in their oeuvre. So, they called it a night.
La Sécurité
Dance punk, through and through. It’s La Sécurité, a five-piece out of Montreal – if you forget the acute accents, you’re a total tourist. Pop-forward rhythms, quickie guitar noodling, and a ballsy fronter mixing in with the pit is all you need to get the room moving.
NOBRO
Holy shit, NOBRO rocks. We’re not reinventing the wheel here – the four-piece of non-bros kicked out punk jams with fast licks and hummable refrains. The fronter asked the crowd to join in a “I don’t give a fuck” ing-along, and the crowd mostly obliged. Shades of The Monkees meet The Bangles meet a broken bongo. Or at least the bassist/bongo player said the bongo rig was broken. She kept smacking those skins anyway and, if it sounded off, nobody gave a fuck. Their latest album Set Your Pussy Free (with runaway single “Let’s Do Drugs”) dropped late last year.
Check out Hump Day News‘ video from M for Montreal:
