by JOHNSON CUMMINS

It’s been quite some time since Montreal has been excited about a full-fledged rock ’n’ roll band. Although this city has some of the greatest rock ’n’ roll bands in the world, most have sadly been relegated to the underground and hence have been denied access to the more pop-inclined. Simply put, we like to heap most of our attention on local bands with pop leanings, though it’s hard to begrudge excellent artists like Patrick Watson, Wolf Parade, Land of Talk, Malajube and others their well-earned accolades.

Les Breastfeeders’ frenzied style of rock ’n’ roll is elbowing its way into the Montreal music scene’s upper echelons, positioning them as quite possibly the next band to watch out of Montreal—and the word “angular,” which has become so synonymous with bands from our fair city, does not apply here at all.

When les Breastfeeders came out in 2004, they hit the ground running with a great debut,

Déjeuner sur l’herbe, steeped in garage, snotty punk and Québécois yéyé stomp. As good as the release was, it did smack of claustrophobic retro posturing, while parading their well-tended garage roots like a badge of honour. The record performed well as a calling card, but for the next two years, les Breastfeeders really earned their stripes by delivering one of the best live shows Montreal has seen in years.

Fuzzy recollections

If the debut catered mainly to the cliquish garage aficionados and Sonics-record-toting members of the fuzz army, guitarist Luc Brien offers no apologies. “I definitely come from a garage-rock background. In the ’80s, before I ever went to a show, I was into bands like the Kinks and the Brood, and then discovered bands like the Sonics and the Downliner Sect. One of the first shows I ever saw was the Gruesomes. I was blown away, and I just wanted to start a band after that. I’m still proud of our garage rock elements, and I think it would be impossible for us to really lose them.”

If Brien got his beginnings in the school of fuzz, with their first record echoing his early influences, the follow-up, Les Matins de Grands Soirs, definitely shows his band outgrowing their roots and opening up to other musical possibilities. While retaining the respect of garage fans with even the most catholic of tastes, les Breastfeeders have gone well beyond the trappings of smash and trash, without ever taking themselves too seriously. The songwriting busts the seams of genre classification, with solid Rezillos-style pop of the infectious “Da Di Dam” and “Funny funiculaire,” the punk rawk of “Viens avec moi” and the rave-up of “Pas sans saveur.”

The adventurous production helps guide the band down new roads, and doesn’t languish amid the dated walls of reverb and fuzz that ran roughshod over their first record. In fact, Brien admits that les Breastfeeders, although they’ve recently stretched out past their garage roots, have found themselves the ambassadors of rock ’n’ roll for a younger audience just discovering it for a first time.

“It didn’t really happen until after we put out the second record, but after that, I started realizing that our audiences were becoming bigger, and were bringing in all kinds of new people. A lot of bands on TV are like emo and stuff, and it’s getting harder for young kids to see that much real rock ’n’ roll. We’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from people saying that they’re finding out more about rock ’n’ roll after seeing us, and that’s a great feeling. It reminds me of when I was that young person, just discovering the Gruesomes. Hopefully, those kids will go out and start their own rock ’n’ roll bands, so we can stop hearing all that emo shit.”

Terror with a tambourine

Their recent crossover success isn’t due solely to the mediocrity hovering under the umbrella of rock ’n’ roll, but can be chalked up, quite simply, to the fact that les Breastfeeders are one of the best live bands Montreal has spawned in quite some time. Although the recent MIMI awards probably still have some of you gagging on grains of salt, they did get one thing right when les Breastfeeders swept the “best live act” category. Like any good rock ’n’ roll band, les Breastfeeders have to be witnessed in a live setting to really get at the marrow of what this band is all about.

Vocalists and guitarists Luc Brien and Suzie McLelove dress so sharp they could draw blood. Bassist Joe (no last name) is seemingly a recruit from the Dee Dee Ramone school of bass anchors w while Fred Fortin hammers the skins. Guitarist Sunny Duval, looking like some sort of rural woodsman just off his graveyard shift at an auto assembly plant, attacks his pawnshop guitars with frenetic abandon. Their true wild card, though, is dancer/tambourine guy Johnny Maldoror. Known for exposing himself to unresponsive audiences and attacking defenceless tables, Maldoror adds a sense of dementia to the show, falling over monitors and off stages, and sometimes spending the entire show creating havoc in the audience.

Using his tambourine as a prop, Maldoror brings the element of danger to les Breastfeeders’ shows, and has the scars to prove it. “We like to put everything we have into playing live, because that’s what rock ’n’ roll is really supposed to be about,” says Duval. “It’s really important to us to try and outdo ourselves. Sometimes we get hurt, but by now we’ve learned the important things, like where to hide our beers so Johnny won’t knock them over. I just don’t understand rock ’n’ roll bands that just sit there on stage, looking at the ground. I don’t know anybody who wants to see that.”

French, toasted

Quebec’s francophone bands have historically been marginalized once they leave the comfy provincial confines. Thanks to the recent trailblazing of fellow French-language mavericks, particularly Malajube, les Breastfeeders find doors kicked open ahead of them and are earning newfound fans, with successful shows in Toronto, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit and Vancouver tucked under their thick white belts. As good as their live act is, Brien and Duval attribute a lot of their success outside of Quebec to their management and booking team, Bonsound (who also handle Malajube).

Bonsound, which started just a couple of years ago, has made it its mission to finally break francophone artists outside of Quebec. “When Bonsound said they wanted to book us in the U.S., we kind of had our reservations,” admits Duval. “Gourmet [Delice, owner of Bonsound] just kept telling us not to worry, that people were going to like us. If anything, because we sing in French, it automatically makes us stick out from the tons of other bands, and people in the U.S. tend to think of it as exotic—which of course is funny, but so far it seems to be working.”

“When we play places like Chicago now,” adds Brien, “we get the same kind of audience reaction we will get in Lac St. Jean. People are definitely more open to things being different now.”

Both agree that the attention paid beyond our borders to the francophone scene right now can be directly traced to Gourmet and co.’s unrelenting mission. Here at home, there have never been more anglo music fans veering east of the St-Laurent divide. “Bands like the Dears and the Arcade Fire definitely helped open people up to Montreal bands, and now people are starting to seek out more bands from the francophone scene,” says Duval. “You’re really starting to see a lot more anglos hanging out at places like l’Escogriffe, and anglophone bands are sharing bills with francophone bands more often now. It’s definitely a more positive move for everybody. I think what it comes down to is, there are good bands and there are bad bands, and people tend to care less about what language they are singing in.”

With Creature at Café Campus tonight,
Thursday, Dec. 14, 8 p.m., $12

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