Transmissions from POP Montréal: Part 1

To be honest, last week was probably not the best time for me to suddenly drop everything and take a last-minute flight to Canada. But when an opportunity falls into your lap to go to see dozens of incredible bands in a city you’ve always wanted to go to in a country you’ve never been to before, you’d be a fool not to snatch that bull by its metaphorical horns and ride it for all it’s worth, or at least until it bucks you off. And that is precisely how I ended up in Montréal, Canada last Thursday morning, bleary-eyed from a too-early flight and sleep-deprived from staying up most of the night to pack and tie up loose ends.

POP Montréal first burst onto the scene in 2002, and even from the start, the extent of the fest was a bit ridiculous: Eighty independent bands (including now-iconic names like Interpol, Broken Social Scene, Martha Wainwright, Blonde Redhead, and far more) in forty venues around Saint Laurent Boulevard. But while that initial lineup would certainly turn some heads today, at the time of the festival’s inception, they were hardly household names. After all, Interpol had only just put out Turn On the Bright Lights a month prior; Broken Social Scene was still a month out from releasing You Forgot It in People; Martha Wainwright had another three years before Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole; and Blonde Redhead wouldn’t hit the charts until 2004’s Misery Is a Butterfly. And that’s why they perfectly fit POP Montréal’s M.O.: the aim of the fest has always been to platform smaller, overlooked bands in the hopes of making pop accessible again—to reclaim the word, sound, and genre from the clutches of big labels and bigger business, and return it to its rightful owners, artists and audiences. And while the festival has only gotten bigger since then, expanding from eighty artists to nearly 200 (thankfully, though, the number of venues has shrunk to a more manageable—but still insane—twenty-ish), that indie mindset has remained the festival’s guiding North Star.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

If you had told me last Tuesday morning that less than forty-eight hours later I’d be going through customs in Montréal, I would not have believed you. But soon enough, I was lugging my suitcase out of YUL airport and into a waiting Uber, praying to every god I could think of that I’d be allowed to check in to my hotel early and take a much-needed nap before the festivities began. Tragically, my prayers went unanswered. This would prove to have devastating consequences later in the day, although I did not know this at the time. Then, all I could do was ask the staff to hold my luggage behind the desk and head out into the gray, rainy Montréal morning.

I was staying across the street from Montréal’s Chinatown, as indicated by the giant red and gold paifang arched above the road. Really though, at that moment I just needed coffee and a place to sit down, so I made my way to a nearby cafe a friend had recommended: Cafe SAT, located in the Society for Art and Technology (the cafe’s slogan, according to its website: “Baristas by day. DJs by night”). I mangled my way through ordering a “Chocolate French Toast” in broken French after eyeing the item in the glass pastry display—it looked more like one of those Starbucks marble poundcake loaf things than the brunch item, so considering both that and the fact that the price was just four Canadian dollars, I chalked the discrepancy up to an awkward translation—and sat at a long wooden table, next to an array of color-organized LEDs and across from the cafe’s wall-to-wall and floor-to-high-ceiling windows. They were open wide despite the rain, and to my mild delight, sparrows kept swooping in to find a reprieve from the rain, hopping around the tables with reckless abandon. I pulled out my laptop and got to work writing some blurbs for that week’s Best New Songs list (and ended up listening to Hannah Frances’ insanely catchy “Life’s Work” on repeat for a solid twenty minutes), but then my “Chocolate French Toast” arrived. And wouldn’t you know it, it was a legitimate and ridiculously good brunch-worthy French toast, with chocolate baked in and syrup drizzled on top. For less than four dollars! This was very exciting to me, a broke post-grad music critic living in New York City. Normally I’d be paying, like, triple that price for something like this.

As the hours passed and it finally got closer to my check-in time, I finished up and took to the streets in the hopes of figuring out Montréal’s public transportation system, because I really didn’t want to take Ubers everywhere for four days (again: broke music critic). Luckily, the stop for the bus that would take me to the bulk of the POP Montréal festivities just ten minutes away, so I moseyed on over to check it out, passing a strip club, radio station, a sex shop, a paintball gun store, and a single place that claimed to simultaneously be a cafe, climbing gym, and licensed massage therapy location on my way. The bus situation seemed easy enough (I would later learn I needed a Montréal bus card to ride, but also that the bus drivers were nice enough to take pity on an ignorant American who tried to use Apple Pay instead, so it all worked out in the end), and I headed back to my hotel, now relatively certain I’d be able to manage transit later that night.

Frankly, at this point I could tell I was going to be dead on my feet if I didn’t get some quick shut-eye soon, so after checking in, I plopped down onto my (very nice!) double bed for a quick nap. Just an hour or two, I told myself, then I’d get up in an hour or two raring to go, ready to run around Mile End catching shows until well after midnight. But—perhaps unsurprisingly—my two-hour nap turned into more of a four-hour one, and I woke up to a handful of snoozed alarms and a sudden onset of panic. After throwing on some clothes, I rushed out to La Sala Rossa, my first venue of the night.

The thing about POP Montréal’s venues is that they largely occupy little makeshift enclaves: there’s the Rialto Theatre area, which includes all four venues within the theatre itself (Rialto Theatre for the headliners, Rialto Hall for the sub-headliners, kind of, Rialto Rooftop for some sunset acoustics, and Piccolo Rialto, for the late-night dance music and hip-hop sets) as well as the small underground locale P’tit Ours down the street. A twenty minute walk away, you’ll reach the Sala Rossa venues (Sala Rossa itself, as well as sweaty DIY venue La Sotterenea found in the former’s basement) alongside Casa del Popolo—and seven minutes from that, you’ll reach Toscadura, after happening on Le Ministére and Le Belmont in between. Then there are the more out-there spots, which are a pain to get to from literally anywhere else: Église Saint-Denis, say, or Bar Le Ritz PDB. As a result, I ended up spending most of the weekend sprinting between Rialto Theatre and La Sala Rossa, so much so that I feel like I have a pretty decent chance of making that 20-minute walk blindfolded.

Photo of Slash Need by Charles Antoine Marcotte

First up on my personal bill was Slash Need, a Toronto-based campy, raw, goth-tronica duo (plus backup dancers donned in mask-painted pantyhose) known for their performance-art live shows and defiant punk spirit. I missed them at SXSW this year, so I didn’t want to make the same mistake again—and they did not disappoint. Bathed in oozing blood-red and hot-pink lighting nearly their entire set, Slash Need filled the venue with primal noise and sheer energy their entire set. Vocalist Dusty Lee was outfitted in all-black, from her corseted leather choker to her midriff-high fishnets, her harsh makeup making her already-intense expressions all the more visceral as she screamed the end of “Border Town” into her mic: “I HATE THIS BODY / I HAD ENOUGH / I WANNA LEAVE / RIGHT IN THE / DUST.” As someone who also hates this body and wants to leave it in the dust on even the best of days, the catharsis of the experience was borderline spiritual. Then it became full-on spiritual when I got quite literally spooked by, well, not a spirit, but you wouldn’t blame me for thinking it was one for a split second: a pantyhose-mask-clad dancer, flashlight in hand, weaving through the audience like a ghostly snake in odd human drag before pouncing on whatever unsuspecting listener caught their eye (read: me). All in all, it fucking ripped.

Photo of Suuns courtesy of POP Montréal

Tragically, I had to dip before the set finished in order to make it to Suuns at the Rialto Theatre—a frequent occurrence throughout the weekend—but a short twenty-minute jaunt later, my bag was checked, my wrist was stamped, and I was having both my ears and mind blown by Montréal’s own experimental art-rock icons. I discovered Suuns years ago; specifically, in February of 2018, which I remember because “2020” was the fourth song on my excessively-carefully-curated high school “month” playlists (February’s had a cover of a rain-blurred windshield, a wave emoji and a tornado emoji, and the subtitle “sad songs for a sad month,” for what that’s worth), smack-dab between dandelion hands and the Mountain Goats. Seven years later, I’m finally seeing them play live—and I gotta say, “sad” wasn’t the word that came to mind. I mean, they were performing in front of gigantic letter balloons that read “SUUNS”; how could it be anything other than just sick as hell? While the band lost bassist and keyboardist Max Henry sometime between 2018’s Felt and 2021’s The Witness, there was no sense of lack or absence in the sound in the slightest, not even when the trio played songs off quartet-era records like Images Du Futur and Hold/Still—and they played quite a handful (some I caught were “Instrument,” “Translate,” and yes, “2020”). They rounded the set out with some tracks off last year’s The Breaks, one highlight being the mutated-pop wonder that is “Fish on a String”—but before I knew it, the show had ended, and it was time for me to trek on.

With my next big escapade—a trip back down to Sala Rossa’s basement venue, La Sotterenea, for PISS—about an hour away, I had some time to kill, and also a sincere desire to sit down and relax for a moment (sadly, my nap did not cure all ills). I found myself heading down the small flight of stairs to the little venue beneath the POP Montréal office, L’Ptit Ours, and stumbled into the middle of Little Mazarn’s sparse, soft showcase. The Dallas act was all hushed words, cello, and singing saw; a stark contrast to the flashing lights and thumping noise of the first two acts I saw that evening, and a welcome one. Multi-instrumentalist Joseph Shabason (with assistance from Thom Gill on guitar) came next, much in the same vein. They played some songs off of Shabason’s inimitable 2023 concept album Welcome To Hell, the very first, and currently very last, math jazz record to take its primary inspiration from skateboarding.

When sufficiently reinvigorated by the healing powers of Texan singing saws and Canadian skate jazz—over the course of both sets, I came to the opinion that if medical practitioners haven’t yet looked into the potential health benefits offered by both, they are not doing their jobs correctly—I got to my feet and made the trek to La Sotterenea. I had twenty or so minutes to emotionally, mentally, and physically prepare myself for the onslaught that was certain to await me at the PISS show in Sala Rossa’s basement, but as it turns out, that was not enough. To be fair, I’m not sure any amount of time would have been. PISS went hard. Unbelievably hard. So hard, in fact, that they literally had to cancel their Friday show because they went too damn hard on Thursday night, causing lead singer Taylor Zantingh to blow out her voice entirely.

I apologize for the excess of italics, but emphasis is needed here to get across just how insanely fucking hard that show went. It couldn’t have been a better fit for the venue, either; the tiny, sweaty, wall-to-wall setup of La Sotterenea made the grime and guts of the show feel tangible, inescapable. The brutalizing fury and passion emanating from the band lingered in the not-so-empty space between songs, which were filled by none other than samples of Andrea Dworkin before the band took up the mantle once more. It was exhilarating, invigorating, a call-to-anger and a call-to-action in equal measure. By the time I stumbled out the front doors of Sala Rossa, I was thoroughly beat, running on fumes and the four-hour nap I had snuck in earlier. So, I headed back to my hotel room and promptly conked the fuck out.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

When I awoke the next morning (sadly only somewhat better-rested), I tried to game out a rough, vague schedule: I would walk through Old Montréal, check out the waterfront, possibly go to a museum, and leave enough time to make the hour-and-change walk up St. Laurent from my hotel to the Mile End portion of the city—more specifically, the Ubisoft building within it. Yes, Ubisoft, the video game company; it confused me, too. But some friends in the know had told me of a secret and unmissable rooftop show happening there in the early evening, and considering I love all things secret, unmissable, on rooftops, and including shows, it seemed a no-brainer.

Thankfully, the weather on Friday morning was much nicer than that of the day prior, so I packed all the essentials (this time sans umbrella) and headed out for the day. I Google Maps’d my way down Chinatown and into Old Montréal and its cobblestone streets, 17th-century buildings, and occasional tourist traps (as it turns out, a lot of those 17th-century buildings now house souvenir shops). As I walked, I learned a few things of note: 1) there was, unsurprisingly, an inverse relationship between my distance from the Old Port and the number of seagulls I encountered, 2) benches are still wet the day after it rains and thus should not be sat on, 3) the age-old beef between French and English Canadians lives on in two satirical statues making fun of both in a central square, 4) Montréal’s Old Port has a ferris wheel, apparently, 5) said ferris wheel costs thirty-two Canadian dollars to ride, apparently, which is a highway robbery that I refuse to validate with my patronage on principle, 6) Canadian schoolchildren seemingly have an hour off midday to go get churros, because my God, were there a lot of unsupervised Canadian schoolchildren getting churros, 7) I am no better than a Canadian schoolchild, because now I want a churro as well, and 8) Canadian street-peddled churros are pretty good.

I sat down on a bench behind the egregiously-priced ferris wheel to eat my churro, admire the changing leaves, and gripe over text to my brother about the aforementioned egregious prices. Seagulls and ducks fluttered around a manmade little lake in front of me as some college students filmed themselves for a project or something off to the side. It was nice. Then: a loud screeching sound from my right, making me almost drop my churro in surprise. I whipped around to see a full-grown man ziplining down the length of the port. I mean, sure, why the hell not. I only hope that, for his sake, it cost less than the ferris wheel. I eventually left because a bee—there are a lot of bees in Montréal, seemingly; I have not done the research as to why, but there’s gotta be something—was trying to fly up my pant leg, and I wasn’t having it. On my way to toss my churro wrapper in a nearby recycling bin, a bright yellow bulldozer drove by blasting none other than “Golden” of K-Pop Demon Hunters fame, a fact that both I and a gaggle of churro-holding, plaid-skirted, French-speaking tweens clocked immediately. We made eye-contact and burst into laughter. Look at that; the language barrier, transcended by mutual recognition of a Netflix original I haven’t even seen. Incredible. Borders are permeable. K-Pop Demon Hunters is forever.

While searching for a spot to grab lunch, I encountered a long line, which is the universal signifier for “there is something here you should look at,” so naturally, I joined it. Turns out it was for entry to Montréal’s 2025 World Press Photo Exposition, which I spent the next hour or two walking through, feeling increasingly devastated about the state of world affairs and also my chosen career of journalism as time went on. That is to say, it was absolutely worth it—precisely because it was so depressing. We live in a dark time, and if we stop documenting it, it will only get darker. A grim couple hours, perhaps, but worthwhile ones.

I grabbed a quick bite at an outdoor cafe and then decided to start meandering up towards the Mile End, knowing that I’d be treating the trek less like a straight shot than an exploratory walking tour. I walked back through the Old Port and its bees and seagulls, back up through Old Montréal and Chinatown, and made my way up Saint Laurent. I stopped in a thrift store or two, peered into some bars and restaurants and an anarchist bookstore, even waited on the line for Schwartz Deli (a famous smoked meat spot) for five minutes before remembering that I don’t even like smoked meat in the first place and leaving. I made a quick detour to check out one of the Leonard Cohen murals in Montréal—a music critic’s pilgrimage to Mecca—and even saw the porn theatre where a random McGill student allegedly punched Harry Houdini so hard he died (to be fair, it wasn’t a porn theatre then, but it’s just so funny to tell the story that way). At one point, I turned down a side street and ended up drinking a smoothie in a cat cafe—not the bullshit American “you can order coffee outside and then pay an entry fee and then play with cats in a glass enclosure” kind, but a real, honest-to-god normal cafe with just a fuckton of cats and cat decor. Hell yeah.

And then, it was Ubisoft time. While it was a “secret” concert, I’m not sure how well that secret was kept, considering the line was down the block by the time I arrived (although, thankfully, I got to skip it alongside some other industry and media friends). We were shuffled into an elevator manned by an anonymous man wearing all black clothes and a white-painted paper bag over his head, communicating solely in grunts. This was, of course, because we were headed to an Angine de Poitrine show: a rising absurdist “Pythagorean-Cubiest Dada-rock” duo from Saguenay known for their elaborate black-and-white polka-dotted papier-mâché costumes designed to preserve anonymity at all costs. The stage set up on the rooftop alleviated any doubts: mics, a drumset and two polka-dotted bedsheets stitched together, one black with white dots, one white with black. For now, though, DJ Yuki was setting the scene—and what a gorgeous scene to set: a 360-view of Montréal just before sunset, golden hour washing the distant cross topping Mont Royal in a warm glow. Also, there was a bar and free pizza. Again: score.

Photo of DJ Yuki by Charles Antoine Marcotte

After mingling for an hour or so, I rushed to the restroom in the hopes of making it back before the show began. I found out rather quickly I would not be so lucky. After descending the flight of stairs leading to the bathroom, I walked directly into none other than the looming bizarre figures of Angine de Poitrine themselves, guided by handlers as they left the green room and walked to the stage. Before I could even squeak out an apology, the long-nosed, square-headed, white-faced-and-black-clothed one gurgled an electronically-mangled hello and robotically raised their right arm, causing their black sleeve to fall just enough to reveal the line where the white paint covering their hand ended and their actual skin began. They moved onwards, and I went to the bathroom whispering, “What the fuck.”

Photo of Angine de Poitrine by Charles Antoine Marcotte

The set was both everything I expected it to be and nothing at all like what I could’ve imagined, precisely because I expected it to be nothing like I imagined. I felt like I had left Montréal and entered an alien cult that had no auditory language save for hypnotic drumwork, looping guitar microtones, and the occasional between-song monotone electrobabble. The majority of the communication was accomplished via triangles and squatting, which I mean very literally: the duo would frame the gold triangles on their heads and chests respectively with their hands until the audience mirrored the gesture back to them, often holding the pose for extended periods of time. This was frequently accompanied by a light squat up and down, repeated ad infinitum—or at least, again, until the audience followed suit, continuing the bend-knees-and-up-and-bend-knees-and-up motion for the length of a long track or two. I felt insane. We all felt insane. It was weirdly, sweetly communal, in that way.

Photo by Charles Antoine Marcotte

When the performance finally ended to raucous applause and Angine de Poitrine left the rooftop with double-necked electric guitar in tow, it was hard to imagine how the act could be followed by literally anything else. Something had to come next—the night was just beginning, after all—but, like, what could possibly follow that? I mean, holy fuck, right?

Exactly right: Holy Fuck. The insane Toronto group known for their live approximations of all the sounds of electronica without using any of its technology or techniques—no laptops or backing tracks or looping or slicing; just film synchronizers, toy keyboards, and children’s phaser guns—was starting up their set just a block or two away in the central Rialto Theatre, so really, it was no question where to head. And tonight, the Theatre’s balcony was open. Now, I’m normally not a balcony girl (what’s the point of going to a concert to sit so far away from the action?), so when my friends motioned us towards the stairs, I resigned myself to a bit of a lackluster experience. I have never been so wrong in my entire life.

Photo of Holy Fuck courtesy of POP Montréal

The Rialto Theatre is organized less like a traditional concert venue than a miniature Broadway playhouse, except with all the floor seats removed and the balcony overhang stretching far closer to the stage. At the front of the balcony, you’re practically a dozen feet from being on top of the stage itself. And for a show as technical and instrumentally complex as Holy Fuck’s, there is nothing better than getting a bird’s eye view. You can see everything that’s happening, every rip of the tape and press of a switch, swathed in pure sound all the while—and at a Holy Fuck show, there’s a lot of sound. Almost deafening, really. Not to use the same joke twice, but it is in their name: holy fuck.

But all I needed to do for a welcome reprieve to the chaos was to head up two flights of stairs to the Rialto’s own rooftop, where Broken Social Scene member Ariel Engle’s solo project, La Force, was performing a cozy acoustic set. It could not have been further from the madness downstairs, which somehow didn’t even bleed through the floor; it was just the band, a rug underfoot, warm orange lamp-light, and a sound system—and also, all of Montréal’s nighttime skyline below. A friend far more versed in POP Montréal than I, having been at this venue before, knew the best spot in the house: do a little bit of parkour up the slight slope in the back to reach the stairs leading to the inaccessible higher-up roof, and stretch out on the steps. It was a little idyllic, honestly; sitting there above the crowd and watching the clouds drift past the moon as Engle’s voice echoed into the distance. Corny? Sure. Cliché? Yeah. But it’s true! Less corny and cliche but also true: Engle introduced one of her songs by saying, “This is a song about protection, but it is not about condoms or dental dams.”

I managed to tear myself away from the peace of that rooftop in time to see local icons TEKE::TEKE—and to take a quick pitstop at Una Rose’s show in Rialto Hall, all gorgeous harmonies and songs about (according to one bit of lore dropped in-between songs) “dating someone and slowly realizing they’re a technofascist.” But then it was TEKE::TEKE time, and Holy Fuck, what a time it was. This time around, I managed to grab a box seat, and I shit you not, I spent that hour feeling the most high I’ve ever felt while being completely sober. The Japanese-Canadian band’s show was utterly ridiculous, with vocalist Maya Kuroki in oversized sunglasses and an overlong string tie, singing into mini-megaphones and skulking around the stage like a woman possessed (I wrote in my Notes App where I was keeping my thoughts for the night: “I want to be her when I grow up”), someone donning a red bowler hat and four stacked faux-disguise glasses (the ones with the fake noses, you know?), and even a flautist and sax player to round out the surf-rock psychedelia of it all. I wasn’t the only one entranced: one of the boons of sitting in a box seat is getting to see the audience on the floor in addition to the band onstage, and I couldn’t help but resonate with an evidently very drunk man smiling ear-to-ear as he rested his elbows on the stage and cradled his head on his hands, watching Kuroki with cartoon hearts in his eyes for the entirety of the band’s near two-hour set—or at least as much of it as I could stay to watch.

Photo of TEKE::TEKE courtesy of POP Montréal

Then, it was back to Rialto Hall for up-and-coming experimental indie-poppers Chanel Beads, whose song “Police Scanner” wound up on our year-end list in 2024. By the time I got there, the set was already in full swing, the room clouded in a smoky haze and filled to the brim with twenty-somethings in ripped shirts and septum piercings (easily the youngest-skewing crowd I’d seen at the fest yet). Hailing from New York myself, I’ve seen Shane Lavers’ NYC-based project a few times now, but I’m never disappointed to see the band in action again—all the more so with such an avid audience screaming the words along with them.

Photo of Chanel Beads by Charles Antoine Marcotte

It was at some point during the Chanel Beads show that my phone died. This was not ideal, seeing as my portable charger had already petered out some time ago and I was absolutely going to need either the Uber app or Google Maps to get home. I made the walk of shame to the first open restaurant that looked like it might have an available outlet: Arahova Souvlaki, a block or two away. It was only when I sat down that I realized just how tired I was, so maybe my phone dying was a blessing in disguise. I was still decently full from all that rooftop pizza, but I ordered a pity pita because it’s kind of a dick move to plug your phone in at a restaurant without buying anything—although, apparently, I was the first person to ever order just pita there before, because the waiter looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Just pita?” Yeah man, just pita. He shook his head in disbelief and walked off. I double-checked that lone pita was on the menu and I wasn’t going crazy and there it was, two Canadian dollars (again: score), right underneath the appetizers heading. When he came back with my apparently very pathetic order, he looked at me searchingly, then told me he was going to get me some dips on the house, because this was just sad. I mean, hey. I’ll take it. So in the end, I got twenty-percent of my phone’s battery back, an order of pita, and some very good tzatziki for just two Canadian dollars—thank you, nice Canadians!

I was going to head back up to the Rialto in order to catch some of the late-night programming—namely, Isabella Lovejoy was closing the night out at 1 AM at the Piccolo Rialto, and between the rumors of blow-up unicorns and the recommendations of many friends, she was one of my must-see acts—but that was an hour and a half away, and I was full of pita and so very tired, so alas, I went back to the hotel, resolving to stay for the whole night’s programming on Saturday. Montréal wasn’t done with me yet; far from it.

Casey Epstein-Gross is Assistant Music Editor at Paste and is based in New York City. Follow her on X (@epsteingross) or email her at [email protected].

Transmissions from POP Montréal: Part 1

POP Montréal’s penchant for centering its programming around underappreciated acts has been successful both in philosophy and in practice. So, we took a trip up north to see it for ourselves.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26