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.
I spent the first half of POP Montréal sprinting between venues, napping badly, and making financial decisions befitting my stature as a typical broke post-grad music critic. But waking up on Saturday morning, I couldn’t help but feel I wasn’t taking enough advantage of all that the festival and the city had to offer; after all, when’s the next time I’d be in Montréal, seeing all these different bands? What am I doing, going home at midnight like a loser? There are practically forty shows a night and I have a Media Pass that’d get me into all of them; is it not appalling that I only attended a measly five on Thursday and six on Friday? Disrespectful, even?
So, on the morning of day three, I resolved to make a plan—a foolproof one, accounting for every minute between my first step onto the WILLS Brewery Terrace at 4 PM to my last step out the door of Espace POP’s 24-hour performance art event at 2:30 AM. I determined that, if I got my timing exactly correct, never overstayed my welcome at any one set, and all the public transportation in the city decided to align seamlessly in my favor, I’d see semi-sizable chunks of precisely twenty-one shows, with only two real casualties (i.e., shows I desperately wanted to see but couldn’t make; in this case, both Truth Club and Pool Kids were too far out of the way to justify attending, considering the tightness of my schedule). What could possibly go wrong?
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
Admittedly, I did end up spending a significant portion of Saturday morning poring over everything until my hypothetical gameplan was perfect, a use of time I can now recognize as being incredibly counterintuitive, considering my initial goal was just to maximize my few days left in Montréal. But, well, I never claimed to be good at this. So let’s just skip over that waste of daylight for now and actually get to the part where I, you know, did things. We’ll return to The Plan later.
By the time I finally made it out of my schedule-induced stupor, I figured it was high time I went out and actually explored the Mile End area where the bulk of the festival was taking place—at this point, I knew the venues themselves in and out, but the rest of the neighborhood was a series of question marks. And I’d spent the previous day walking around Old Montréal, the Old Port, Chinatown, and all the locales near my hotel, so why not?
I took a quick half-hour bus (which the driver was once again nice enough to let me on, despite my American ass only having Apple Pay and no Montréal transit card), intending to disembark at the Souvlaki diner I got my sad pita at last night, but accidentally overshooting it by a stop. Lemons from lemonade, though: I ended up directly in front of a famed donut shop I had read about, Bernie’s Beignets. And hey, they say not to look a gift horse in the mouth (or a donut in the hole?), so I immediately sidled up and got in line. After spending the entire wait hemming and hawwing about what to get, my indecision led me to treat myself to three entire massive donuts, a poor decision that was easily justified by the realization that I could just keep them in my hotel afterwards—boom, instant breakfast for the next two days. I got a classic glazed (their most popular; verdict: understandably so), a carrot cake donut with cream cheese icing (the cashier’s recommendation; verdict: understandably so), and a blue-iced M&M donut (my personal guilty pleasure; verdict: delicious but I felt a little sick from the sugar rush after just three bites). I debated waiting in the line across the street for Alphabet Cafe—which is apparently the second punch in the one-two-hitter of breakfast pickups on Mile End, the first being Bernie’s—but ultimately decided against it, as the line was long and I’m not a huge coffee person, anyways.
I spent the next hour or two just walking around, donut box in hand, peeking into record stores and vintage boutiques, admiring the greenery-dotted streets and elegant walk-ups, and people-watching (which is, sadly, significantly less fun when you can’t actually understand any conversations because everyone is speaking French and you’re a sad American who only ever took Latin in school). Over time, I grew a little nauseous from my morning’s diet of pure sugar and decided to stop for eggs somewhere, eventually landing on a trendy, bustling diner called Larry’s—in my scouring the web for recommendations, I found a Bon Appétite post calling it “the best breakfast in Mile End,” and wouldn’t you know it, it was a block away. They sat me at the rounded bartop and handed me two menus—one French, one English—both with confusingly few items that looked detailed enough to count as entrees. I reread the review I skimmed earlier, and as it turned out, Larry’s was something of an a la carte place, and you were intended to order a few of the smaller plates (say, scrambled eggs, pikelets, house-made sausages, and a parfait). I wasn’t really that hungry; mostly, I just wanted some eggs and potatoes, so eggs and potatoes I got (although the potatoes, it turned out, were fries. Close enough). It was pretty good, although the egg portions seemed a bit on the smaller side for eight Canadian dollars—and I’m saying this as someone from New York, where everything is overpriced—and I’m not the biggest soft-scramble gal in the first place. I regretted my order a little bit when I saw what the two locals to my right got; they clearly came with a purpose, and that sourdough toast + roast tomato + eggs + difficult-to-make-out green vegetable combo looked real good.
After paying the bill, I walked around some more, making note of the lines outside two iconic cash-only Montréal bagel spots I had yet to try (Fairmount and St-Viateur), a small ice-cream store called Kem Coba, and what seemed to be a window-service gnocchi pop-up shop, which boasted the longest line of all. By this point, it was reaching mid-afternoon, which meant the first—albeit least strictly regimented—steps of The Plan were looming on the horizon, and that meant I needed to get these donuts back to the hotel, stat. I dropped off the goods, grabbed the night’s essentials, perhaps took a breather for a minute or two, and then headed out once more, now to WILLS Brewery & Bar, the site of this year’s POP Montréal record fair. Now, I had little intention of buying any records (I am not yet a proud owner of a record player, although I’m hoping that will change soon) nor entering the raffle for the free bike (what good would I have for it here?), but it seemed like a good thing to do regardless—all the more so because the event featured sets from LA’s experimental dance music duo Soltera and electro-punk-disco act Nectar Palace (sineila and Renon provided jams earlier in the day as well). It was fun to just amble through the fair anyways, flipping through cardboard boxes of records like I understood their French genre labels and drinking on the terrace to Nectar Palace’s guitar.
Mostly, though, I was preparing myself for The Plan. The first stops were easy enough—Billianne, Rialto roof, 6:30; Cedric Noel, La Sala Rossa, 7:30—but when the clock turned to 8 PM, I knew shit would hit the fan. In order for The Plan to be executed flawlessly, I would need to dash back and forth from the Rialto Theatre area to the Sala Rossa area (and on occasion dip down even further to Tuscadora) upwards of six times throughout the night. It would require intense speed-walking, actually punctual public transit, and even (gasp!) the occasional Uber. But I was ready. My body was ready. Somehow, I’d make it work.
Spoiler alert: I did not, in fact, make it work. In hindsight, I’m not quite sure how I thought I’d catch simultaneous lineups at two locations twenty minutes apart from one another, with three more simultaneous shows at other venues to boot—although the part of me that thought it was possible is still screaming, “By staying for only fifteen minutes of each and then rapidly taking whatever transportation necessary to each location!” as I write this. (To her, I say: “I do not have the financial means to take ten Ubers in a single night. You know this.”) And sadly, my intended lineup suffered some serious consequences: I missed Katy Pinke, Fat Dog, Muhoza, Hanako, Narcy, and worst of all, Ribbon Skirt. We here at Paste even wrote in our pre-festival coverage that “it would be a big mistake not to catch Ribbon Skirt in their hometown if you haven’t had the chance to see them yet”—and alas, I fell victim to my own folly, missing one of the fest’s most anticipated (and, as it turns out, entirely sold out) sets in the process. But hey! In the end, I did manage to catch fifteen, which more than doubles my Friday night count. So… Actually, kind of a success?
Photo of Billianne by Charles Antoine Marcotte
Billianne on the Rialto rooftop was my soft-open. No parkour to the stairs this time around; for some reason, a security guard gave me a stern talking-to the second I pulled myself up the railing, despite the same act meeting no resistance whatsoever the night prior. It was very public and mildly humiliating. My press badge felt like a scarlet letter; I had failed Paste Magazine. I represented us poorly to the world. To this day, my ego has yet to fully recover. I shuffled away with my tail between my legs and tried to find a place to sit on the floor that would make people stop looking at me with that pitying secondhand embarrassment in their eyes. Thankfully, Billianne’s voice was as good a distraction I could possibly hope for. This was my second time seeing her in the flesh—my first being when she performed at our Paste Party during South by Southwest this year—and the clarity of her tone blew me away anew. She’s got that big-pop-singer-in-the-making timbre that feels radio-ready without sanding off the grain. “Are you guys prepared for me doing this a lot?” she asked, before doing an adorable little shimmy with a sheepish laugh. A spite song aimed at an old label landed with a particular gleam at sunset; you could hear the vowels catch and hang in the air. I didn’t stay for her whole set—I had a schedule to maintain!—but even as I walked to the bus station, I could hear her voice still faintly echoing down Park Ave.
At Sala Rossa, I slid in for Cedric Noel and listened to strangers compare notes in line—“I’ve seen so many different genres of shows,” one woman told her friend, which sounded about right for this week. Noel sat on a stool and sang in warm, deep tones; Thanya Iyer (whose Wednesday set I tragically arrived a day too late to catch) slid a violin line across the mix like light through a slatted blind. While the sound was all long, soulful sustains, smooth sax, effortless harmonies, and drum fills from a perpetually grinning Aaron Dolman that filled the room as much as they did the songs, the band themselves played with the relaxed, inside-joke joy of a friend group. And, of course, Noel’s voice is a force to be reckoned with—but that goes without saying.
Photo of Shunk by Charles Antoine Marcotte
I hoofed it back up to the Rialto for SHUNK and discovered, to my inconsolable grief, that the balcony was closed for the entire evening. I grabbed a high chair towards the bar as a sad consolation prize, trying my hardest not to make the couple next to me feel like they’d been stuck with an unwanted third wheel. I was a fair distance from the stage, but could feel the raw blasts of energy like I stood right at the barricade. A black-corseted Gabrielle Domingue howled into the mic before lilting seamlessly into an operatic updraft, and I suddenly understood why the band’s bio listed their genres as both punk and opera. The set ended a hair early, which should have helped The Plan, but instead just left a little gap that wasn’t long enough to be useful. I hate dead air.
I figured I might as well fill said dead air with the kind of air that makes you dead, so I stepped outside and bummed a cigarette off a friendly tattoo artist—file this under Chekhov’s Ink, we’ll see him again—and he told me a story about a guy trying to get a huge ass tattoo (all three words doing heavy lifting) for reasons orthogonal to art. A photographer drifted in, we did the festival roll call, and when we wandered back in, he snapped an instant of me and the tattoo guy perched on our high stools like slightly uncomfortable gargoyles.
Photo of Elle Barbara by Charles Antoine Marcotte
Elle Barbara took the big room in something like a seventies aerobics fantasy—hot, elastic, composed, and… filled with mac ‘n’ cheese? In a rare moment where I was able to snap out of my Barbara-induced trance enough to register any lyrics, I could’ve sworn I heard the lines “Burn in hell / Burn in hell / Burn in hell / How can a side of mac ‘n’ cheese be this good?” (As it turns out, I absolutely did; to quote an Instagram post from Barbara: “The regular mention of mac & cheese on Word on the Street is a metaphor for corporate capitalism, consumerism and the industrialization of all things. I use mac & cheese as a symbol and shorthand for broader socio-political critique – in order to deride corporate behavior and its hidden agendas.” I mean, yeah, fuck it. Burn in hell, mac ‘n’ cheese!). She’s magnetic, the kind of frontperson who turns a theatre into a ballroom—a beloved comfort food into a stand-in for all societal ills.
I caved and ordered my first Uber of the night, in fear I’d arrive at La Sotterenea too late to catch Ducks Ltd. I posted up outside famous bagel joint St-Viateur while I waited, where I accidentally accosted Aaron Dolman (Noel’s drummer) mid-bagel. He laughed—“You probably recognized me from the striped shirt;” he was right—and mentioned he was sprinting to P’tit Ours for another set with Shelby Trupid. It seems Montréal musicians work like short-order cooks; there’s always another ticket in the window.
Down at La Sotterenea, Ducks Ltd. were mid-sprint in a room the size of a generous hallway (which, of course, only added to the ambience). The room was sweaty and riotous, rapid-fire guitar and three-part harmonies stretching wall to wall. It was a small stage, but the band made use of every inch of it, with singer and rhythm guitarist Tom McGreevy punctuating guitar runs with these little leg kicks that looked like punctuation marks. It’s how he gets his steps in, he joked after the set while manning the merch table.
Upstairs, Sala Rossa was behind schedule, which landed me in the last stretch of fanclubwallet instead of Pompey (which, like, hell yeah; extra band!). I grabbed a side table and let the room’s pulse settle; on the stairs, Noel was holding court on the stairs, unhurried and friendly as he chatted with passersby, like the night wasn’t already triple-booked for him. fanclubwallet sounded tight from what I caught—enough to mark down a proper listen later—then it was back into the transit lottery.
Photo of U.S. Girls by Charles Antoine Marcotte
A bus dropped me off back at the Rialto once more, this time for Toronto art pop outfit U.S. Girls. I weaved through the crowd while Meg Remy (barefoot, somehow both ethereal and extremely practical) announced between songs, “I have very bad eyes. I have the highest level prescription. My eyes look good but they don’t see shit,” then tried to shout out a friend with even worse vision. A couple next to me started pointing and cheering—it was the woman standing right there—but Remy couldn’t actually spot her, which only improved the joke. When she picked up the setlist, it was inexplicably soaking wet (????) and therefore useless. “Okay, we’re doing requests,” she decided, conferring with the band until they collectively half-remembered one shouted title: “I think we know that one.” They did. “You guys, I’m gonna slip and fall so bad—get ready,” she warned, lifting her wet feet like a punchline. But at least while I was there, no accidents were had. Remy moved like water though, body lilting soulfully in tune with her always-clear voice.
I lost ten more minutes to the Uber Bermuda Triangle—the map swore my car was “here,” reality swore otherwise; I should’ve just taken the damn bus again—then finally snagged a ride back to Sala Rossa and slipped in just in time to catch the tail of Pompey’s set. Noel was on drums this time, still grinning warmly, trading looks with Thanya Iyer (still on violin!) between fills like the two of them were keeping a secret the rest of us would only get in pieces. Pompey worked the room with that endearing, self-effacing patter: “Who’s here pretending they’re not tired? That’s how life works, isn’t it?” He introduced one number as “I’m Just a Little Baby,” then lined up the closer: “We have just one song left. It’s called ‘I’m Scared’—that’s the name of the album and also my favorite feeling. Do we ever do anything not because we’re scared? Is anyone not scared right now?” A few brave “woo”s. “Oh, so some of you think you’re better than me.” The room cracked up. The songs themselves were decidedly less funny, all filled with soft-spoken, cracked-voice confessions that landed in the gut, all the more raw for how simple they were: “I’ll be hoping that I don’t die ’til the day I die.” As I wrote in my Notes app while darting out the door: “he’s a little like a cross between Daniel Johnston and Jeffrey Lewis and also like a Hobo Johnson that isn’t insufferable/an affront to music,” which I did mean as a compliment (to Pompey, not to Hobo Johnson).
Downstairs, La Sotterenea was a pressure cooker for Welsh Gob Nation rockers The Tubs. It was the smallest crowd I’ve ever seen sustain a mosh pit and crowd surfing, but both happened anyway—in the midst of “Chain Reaction,” guitarist Dan Lucus went up with instrument still in hand, and some random dude launched himself just because he could. The median age of the pit was higher than any I’ve ever clocked, and it ruled: dads and lifers smashing into each other, all smile lines and gray hair and sweat-soaked shirts. Frontman Owen Williams shoved a second mic into the crowd for gang vocals, then capped the whole sweaty mess by calling us “a bunch of French people.” I left with my cheeks hurting from grinning so hard. Overheard next to me: “That kind of show is what it’s all about, man.” I can’t help but agree.
I ran into a friend outside also planning on walking back to Rialto, and we stopped into Taraneh at Casa del Popolo for about ninety seconds—loud, goth, fog-machine-forward—before The Plan insisted I start heading back to the other venue. I was making good enough time, though, for us to first stop at Fairmount Bagel on our way. It’s a famous spot for a reason; just look at their bagel toss vids, the employees slinging sticks of piping hot bagels into a basket all in one fell swoop with gymnastic nonchalance. Now, this was my first Montréal bagel, which I knew to be a big deal. But, even after just one bite in—apologies to Montréal—my verdict was clear: this is not a bagel. This is a pastry. A very good, sesame-forward pastry, yes, but let’s call a spade a spade and a pastry a pastry, alright?
Back at Rialto Hall, I stumbled into the precise sweet spot of the Face Your Fears Ball: the tail-end of intermission, i.e., prime runway. We belted “Happy Birthday” to the MC, and then categories started snapping by: trypophobia runway (everyone doing their best blue steel while donning outfits full of holes); botanophobia as best-dressed (featuring two truly insane flower dresses and a similarly insane rose suit); a performance face-off pitching coulrophobia (a dozen people in clown drag doing their best femme vogue, duck-walking til my knees hurt from just watching) against zombophobia (old way and new way, the rigid precision and fine lines of the style used to great effect in one entrant’s zombie walk). If you’ve never watched a room’s temperature rise just from the call-and-response of ballroom house names—Mulan, Pink Lady, Old Navy, 007, Juicy—you’d think chanting was ornamental. It isn’t. I’m pretty sure there was almost a Juicy v. Mulan fight during the runway section.
And by algophobia (the kink-heavy sex siren category, all bare skin and ball gags, whips and chains), the place was molten. Not softcore; not even close. My mouth was agape for so long I think my jaw almost unhinged. The male MC, fanning himself: “I’m gay and I can’t even take this. I’m about to combust.” (Not everyone was as entranced: the twink in front of me provided color commentary to his friends with lines like “I can smell her stinky puss from here.” Which, like… Absolutely insane to be watching that scene unfold and be thinking about the smell of all things. I’m pretty sure all my non-visual senses shut off entirely as a last-ditch attempt to stay sane amid the raw sex appeal around me). I told myself I’d leave by 12, 12:30 at the latest. Reader, I only managed to pull myself away at 1:15 AM. Over the course of the night, I had discovered my two weaknesses: Ubers and death drops. Next time I will plan accordingly.
Palestinian rap trio DAM were just about the only thing that could’ve made me leave that ballroom, and as sad as I was to miss the final category (bizarre, the theme being mysophobia and the contestants dressed as literal microbes), there was no way I wasn’t heading down to Piccolo Rialto for this highly anticipated last act of the night. Maysa Daw and brothers Tamer and Suhell Nafar turned the theatre into a rally you could dance to. “How come the children of the world are free except our children,” hit like a brick and then became a beat, and then we were all moving again—keffiyehs in the crowd, Arabic punching through the mix, video screens amplifying rather than distracting.
Coming straight from the Ball sharpened the whole thing: two rooms of people insisting on their right to be seen, to make noise, to look incredible and make some fucking noise while doing it. Everything is political. In this day and age, it has to be. And as an American watching my money being siphoned to fund a genocide, my religion coopted to silence resistance, and my vote exploited in the name of refusing my friends their rights to their own bodies, there was something meaningful about standing there—albeit in Canada—with the heels from the kiki clacking overhead, the thrum of the bass pounding through the floor, the final words of Daw’s Arabic poem ringing in my ears. While the world is awful and brutal and cruel, at least there are enclaves like this—not just ethically and morally defensible, but a hell of a lot of fun to boot. The show ripped, full stop. DAM know how to get a crowd moving, and I can say this with utter confidence because they got me moving, and it was 2 AM and my feet hurt and there was nothing I wanted to do less than jump up and down for half an hour. Except that’s exactly what I did.
Photo of Velours Velours by Charles Antoine Marcotte
I closed at Espace POP with Velours Velours’ 24-hour stunt, Do We Decide If It’s the End?, which was genuinely a grueling conceptual gauntlet, for as much as the singer-songwriter seemed to have with it. The conceit: a bell hangs from the ceiling; every time someone rings it, he has to play the same song, “La Fin,” again. For twenty-four hours. There was a mattress and everything. When I arrived, the chalkboard tally was well into the seventies. Friends sat cross-legged on the floor, a dog trotted in celebratory loops, someone rolled a joint, someone else delivered pizza. Mid-slice, the bell rang again; he chewed, swallowed, and sang through it, mouth full, deadpan. At around 2:15, the band playing strings behind him started packing up and the night shifted into solo mode; POP staff traded shifts like nurses at a ward. I stayed for three more dings and then tapped out, exhausted and grateful that I, for one, got to sleep. On the sidewalk waiting for my ride, I heard the bell again. He started over.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
After the chaos of Saturday, I let myself sleep in, satisfied that I’d wrung the schedule dry the night before—or, at least, as dry as was probably possible. No master plan today; just a loose list and the freedom to drift. Which was good, because my first destination immediately went sideways.
I aimed for the POP Parade, which was supposed to wind through Mile End with live bands and floats, and somehow managed to miss it entirely. You wouldn’t think a parade could hide in a neighborhood this small—brass bands and costumes aren’t exactly subtle—but every turn I took led to empty streets. The only commotion I stumbled into was a city bus trying to pull into a stop at the corner of Rialto Theatre. A badly parked car forced the driver to angle wide; the rearview mirror clipped the glass shelter and the whole thing shattered instantly, like sugar glass in a movie stunt. No injuries, just the collective “Holy fuck?” of strangers who’d just witnessed something absurd and unrepeatable. If I couldn’t find the parade, at least Montréal transit gave me a one-car performance art piece. My lone regret is not thinking of pocketing a little shard of glass as a souvenir.
I wandered into Bar Cola, a café-slash-record-store-slash-Italian-restaurant a few blocks over, and then into a second shop tucked onto a side street—two temples of vinyl within spitting distance of the Rialto. It was approaching the time for the single most exciting event of the entire festival: Fashion PUP, a nautical-themed dog fashion show. I started making my way to the outdoor venue L’Entrepôt 77 in anticipation. I spontaneously stopped for a soft-swirl cone of vanilla chai and concord grape, refreshingly tart in the heat, and only later learned I had happened upon Dalmata Bar Laitier, a beloved ice cream shop that typically boasted lines down the block. I just got lucky.
But then—Fashion Pup! L’Entrepôt 77 was bursting with families and dogs for the festival’s annual canine fashion show, pets and owners alike decked out in sea creature attire. Every inch of floor was covered in strollers, toddlers, wagging tails. The crowd cheered like it was a headliner set, except the “performers” were pugs in sailor hats and golden retrievers in life jackets. Categories included fashion, talent, and charm and personality. At one point during the latter, I heard the MC (Sandy Bridges) bellow, “JJ JUST ATE A WASP! If that isn’t charming, I don’t know what is!” and I have never agreed with a sentiment more. Now, I’d never FaceTimed my mom from a festival before (why would I?), but when a tiny dog in a giant angler fish headpiece waddled out, I ignored international roaming fees and dialed. I wasn’t the only one audibly cooing for forty-five minutes straight. Montréal is a music city, sure, but on Sunday afternoon, it was also a dog city. Bonus twist: last night’s tattoo-guy-cigarette-buddy showed up on the judge’s panel. Small world, small dogs. And big dogs too. And in-between ones. Just, like, a lot of dogs.
I ducked out before the winners were announced to catch a “sound bath” at Rialto Hall. Unfortunately, I arrived at 4:15 to find mats already rolled up and volunteers packing instruments that looked like they belonged in a Rube Goldberg machine—massive gongs, chimes, bowls, and the like arranged in a bafflingly convoluted setup. With nothing else scheduled until Comedy POP that evening, I tried to fill the void by taking one big tourist swing: Mont Royal. Google Maps betrayed me instantly. My Uber dropped me at the bottom of a random road, not the main observation deck lot. The driver brushed me off in favor of answering a phone call, leaving me to puzzle over a park map that offered only one solution: stairs. Hundreds of outdoor stairs. I trudged upward in jeans and boots, no water (don’t get me wrong, dehydration is a baseline fact of my life at this point, but this was particularly rough), the only unprepared climber in sight. At the top, I bee-lined to a water fountain before collapsing on a bench. The guy next to me offered me Tums out of nowhere. I declined—already on Pepto duty—and he nodded knowingly: “She knows what the hell is up.” I had never felt prouder to be a Pepto-Bismol girl, and likely never will again.
The view was crowded but spectacular: downtown Montréal glowing in the late afternoon light. Tourists posed for shots while two men with an old-school camera rig took free portraits and printed them out like newspaper clippings. I now own a fake broadsheet declaring my arrival at Mont Royal, which is more than I can say for most tourist traps. Other observation decks, take note.
Then I made the mistake of chasing the cross. That sounds like some metaphor, but I mean it as literally as possible. On paper, the Mont Royal cross is the most visible landmark in the city; in practice, it’s hidden behind bad signage and blocked paths. Locals pointed me in contradictory directions. Google Maps promised shortcuts through the woods, all of which dead-ended behind fences. I lost service, the light started dimming, and the whole thing felt like a stress dream: endless trees, no trail markers, no guarantee I wasn’t walking in circles. Just as Saintseneca’s “Good Hand” reached its final swell in my earbuds, I stumbled out of the brush and saw the massive steel cross above me. No one else was there. Definitely not the tourist hotspot I expected, but honestly, it kind of rocked. The emptiness was unnerving, but also deeply satisfying, a private win snatched from a very dumb adventure. But a word for the future Montréal-goers reading this: skip the “shortcuts,” take the main road. Google Maps will always let you down.
By then I was late for Comedy POP. I sprinted back down, caught an Uber from the correct parking lot this time, and arrived at Rialto Theatre in time to find out the show didn’t start until eight, not 7:30. I snagged a second-row seat in a haze of dry ice and chatted with Thanya Iyer, as Cedric Noel and Pompey floated through the crowd like regulars at their own block party, which at this point it really did feel like they actually were.
Musician, comedian, podcaster, and host for the night Eve Finley kicked off with a song about bedbugs (fucking yikes) and the announcement that Pompey would be providing live musical cues. “Can you play something upbeat?” she teased. He nodded sheepishly, strummed a chord, and out came the songs from the previous night, timidly half-whispered into the mic: “I’m scared / That I’ll say the wrong thing / When I’m scared / That I won’t do anything.” She groaned overexaggeratedly and cut him off, the crowd laughing along with her.
Not every act soared—Tandem Jump’s sketch comedy felt trapped in 2013 YouTube humor, all shirtless pratfalls, fake vomiting of cheetos, and ebola punchlines (seriously, I felt like I had fallen down a wormhole and ended up trapped in my middle school cafeteria). But, well, they can’t all be hits, and if the worst set I saw all weekend was a rookie sketch troupe, that’s a pretty good batting average. Things picked up with 24doubleb’s chaotic pseudo-improv, which got real laughs out of sheer commitment to awkwardness, and headliner Sami Landri, a drag queen whose set ranged from timely jokes (again: everything is political!) to bilingual riffs on Montréal’s oddities.
Photo of Do Make Say Think courtesy of POP Montréal
I closed my festival at Rialto Hall with Do Make Say Think, a Canadian post-rock institution whose sprawling instrumental compositions filled the theatre like weather. Sitting in a box seat, I felt wrapped in their sound, the way guitar loops, horns, and drums folded into each other seamlessly until they felt like a single organism. One guy in the front row was having the time of his life, high on either life or something else—he was more excited for each and every individual note than I have ever been for anything in my entire life. I envied him. I stayed until the final stretch, then peeled away to pack for a 4 AM flight, ears still buzzing.
POP Montréal ended the way it began: slightly disorganized, utterly charming, and full of moments too strange and specific to ever repeat. Four days of donuts, bagels (read: pastries), utterly destroyed bus stops, dogs in nautical drag, humans in trypophobia drag, and more music than my schedule could possibly contain. The kind of festival you can’t do perfectly—which is exactly why it’s worth doing at all.
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].
