Check your expiry date

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

The second greatest Montreal fest—the first would be the Festival aux Homards, natch—finally gets underway this week, and the line-up over its five days is just plain sick. Pop Montreal has hit a new plateau with its eclectic programming, remaining an arm’s length away from overbearing sponsorships (just look down the 401 for that) while still able to flex the muscle to book top-drawer names. Quite a thin rope they do stride. It’s starting up this Wednesday, Oct. 1, but before I start hipping you to the week ahead, let’s take a look at some of the shows that happened last week.

The long overdue Montreal debut of underground über-gods Shellac pulled into la Sala Rossa last Wednesday and Thursday, and uh, for me—meh. Having made it in for the first night, the band played for what seemed like an eternity in the packed venue, and truthfully, once the band was “on,” they managed to go from boring to good, but the large gaps between songs, which included not one but two question periods handled by bassist Bob Weston, tended to lose whatever traction they gained. Maybe I was expecting too much, but the sparks of excitement were just too rare. Having said that, though, I appeared to be in the minority as most people walked away pretty amped, so enough of my blubbering.

The show that surprised and surged well beyond expectations was Mudhoney at la Sala Rossa on Saturday, with covers of Black Flag, Fang and the Dicks, not to mention absolutely killer versions of classics like “In ’n’ Out of Grace,” “Touch Me I’m Sick” and “When Tomorrow Hits.” As if time had never passed, Mudhoney remains the best Stooges ripoff band that has ever existed. Even the assclowns with Tad shirts stagediving couldn’t take anything away from this one.

Mudhoney may be an exception to the rule as far as delivering the goods while getting long in the tooth goes, but you might want to take Mr. Chi Pig’s latest reincarnation of SNFU with a wee grain of salt, when he and his recently recruited back-up band pull into Hémisphère Gauche on Friday, Sept. 26. Hope I’m wrong here, but the other original members aren’t too enthusiastic—songwriter Mark Belke has blogged that he wishes Chi would just let it die. Approach with extreme caution.

Some safer bets would start off on Friday with the return of psych warlords Black Mountain at le National, but make sure you show up early to check out the mellow psych of Jesse Sykes. Also happening on Friday is the tech/death of Cryptopsy, Origin, the Last Felony and Tormentor Allegoria at Club Soda.

If you really want to start Pop off with a bang, the best place to be on Wednesday night, peep my spread on the Weird Punk Montreal series in this week’s issue.

PUNK’S NOT DEAD, IT JUST SMELLS FUNNY…JONATHAN.CUMMINS@GMAIL.COM