Music
Listen to 7 essential tracks from Montreal's independent music scene
Ahead of Montreal indie label Arbutus Records' 10th-birthday party at Red Bull Music Festival Montreal, here are some essential tracks from the city's vibrant indie scene.
Montreal may not be the actual capital of Canada, but it's certainly the creative one. Its rich cultural history and its English and French influences has created less a melting pot and more a magma-hot cauldron of different tastes and notes.
The city's indie music story began in the 1990s, in the city's Mile End district. Its low prices and high levels of industry made its concrete streets a fertile ground for art and music, sprouting as eternally as the city flag's five flowers.
Through the growth of legendary venues, such as Hotel2Tango, came the blooming of equally legendary indie bands. From Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Grimes to Arcade Fire and Arbutus Records, which is throwing a big 10th-birthday party show as part of Red Bull Music Festival Montreal this month, the city has created indie scenes eclectic as they are electric.
Here's a selection of essential tracks you should listen to from a city with an incredible discography.
Arcade Fire in 2014
© Paul R. Giunta / Red Bull Content Pool
1. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – East Hastings
With East Hastings recorded at Hotel2Tango and penned for release on the iconic Constellation Records, it had all the makings of a masterpiece even before it was made.
While these beginnings were a sure-fire sign of quality, the tune's actual beginning is suffocating. Opening with piercing bagpipes, white noise wind and the prophetic lilt of a city preacher, it's a post-rock opera that rewards the most patient listeners.
Its apocalyptic, winding guitar riffs, blowing across a bleak soundscape of ambience and buzzing bass tones, also bagged it a spot on Danny Boyle's dystopian film 28 Days Later.
2. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra – F*** Off Get Free (The Island Of Montreal)
“We live on an island called Montreal, and we make a lot of noise…because we love each other," begins the post-rock band's seventh, implausibly titled album, F*** Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything.
It's a perfect summary of the album opener, with its Montreal experimentalism, dark themes of love and foreboding ("It's been too long since a stranger held my hand," goes one line), and tinnitus-inducing levels of noise. It shows the longevity of Montreal's acts, with Thee Silver Mt. Zion producing some of their finest work nearly 20 years after their inception.
As well as recording under half a dozen other names that usually incorporate the words Thee Silver Mt. Zion and things like Tra La La Choir, this long-running group also shares members with those other Montreal post-rock titans, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And similarly to that band's tunes, songs like F***Off Get Free are an onslaught for the ears, but ones that will envelop and, depending on your mood, even caress you.
3. Arcade Fire – Rebellion (Lies)
Arcade Fire's debut album Funeral put its themes of mortality at the very fore, but, musically, these morbid expositions are delivered by a trojan-horse sound that's as euphoric as it is euphonic.
Tucked away near the album's end, Rebellion (Lies) demonstrated that combination – and Montreal’s motto of "well-being through harmony" – with perfectly scruffy precision.
With pounding piano and a killer key change beyond any locksmith, it was the perfect anthem for a generation lusting after its own golden-era of meaningful and emotionally-charged indie.
4. Wolf Parade – I'll Believe In Anything
Forming a couple of years after Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade assembled themselves in the three weeks prior to their first show. Even though their formation was rushed, though, their tunes are transcendent joys crafted to indie-rock perfection.
Included on their album Apologies To The Queen Mary, I'll Believe In Anything recalls Portland, Oregon's massively influential (but criminally underrated) Modest Mouse with its angular hooks and throaty vocals, before a howling, parade-like conclusion.
Not only a staple of the Montreal canon, its video also features cannons being shot at birds.
5. Grimes – Genesis
After Montreal's first wave of indie bands and labels had paved the way for a series of DIY institutions, a new generation acts followed in their footsteps and created their own markings. Many of these were found on Sebastian Cowan's Arbutus Records.
The label is currently celebrating 10 years of releasing an eclectic selection of artists who run the stylistic gamut from introspective indie-folk to strange electronic pop.
Representing the latter end of the spectrum is Grimes. She signed up to Arbutus after relocating from Vancouver to Montreal, and her 2012 LP Visions led to worldwide acclaim for its ethereal, lo-fi synth-pop.
Her track Genesis weaves together gossamer threads of dreamy vocals and flute synths to create a holy trinity of indie, pop and electronic goodness. No wonder she's ended up working with Janelle Monáe.
6. Blue Hawaii – In Two / In Two II
Also at home on Arbutus are Blue Hawaii, who make radiant pop songs that ingeniously mix together techno beats with hazy vocals that sound as beatific as they do beautiful.
In Two / In Two II, which is taken from their second release Untogether, is a display of intoxicating pop alchemy that infuses the synths of dance music with the sounds of dream-pop records to create a strange, but instantly welcoming new world.
7. Sean Nicholas Savage – Promises
After being welcomed into the fold at the Lab Synthese DIY arts and venue space at 435 Beaubien Ouest, the project that would eventually spark the start of Arbutus, Sean Nicholas Savage found a place he could express himself and perform his arresting lo-fi songs.
His style is harder to pin down than a poster on a wall made of jelly, as he stirs the sounds of Montreal's past, present and future into a psychedelic brew of influences. So of course Arbutus signed him up. Check out his vast array of music on his Bandcamp page.
Before it ends with a Diamond Dogs-esque spoken-word monologue, Promises is an '80s-inspired pop song that's catchier than a humming crab, weaving falsetto vocals around sounds that are straight out of a yard sale drum machine.
