From what I can remember…

If there’s one thing that’s always abundantly clear during Pop Montreal, it’s that the legends and pioneers that are still performing are anything but tired and out of touch. They may be older than our parents, but holy shit, can some of them still wail. I won’t go on at length here, particularly given that these folks have been lauded and scrutinized since before I was born, so there’s no point in me declaring them hits. But certainly some of the highlights of the festival for me were shows by New Orleans’s charming Irma Thomas, Jamaican fireball Sister Nancy and of course the hilarious Jean-Jacques Perrey, who at 78 is weathered enough to spend about six minutes chatting with a stuffed elephant on stage before his daughter sneakily took it away from him, but fresh enough to rip the synths like nobody’s business.

THUMPING: Bonjay

I will however run down some of the more promising new acts I caught, in the interests of giving you a heads-up for future shows. One act I caught twice over the course of the festival was Toronto’s thumping Bonjay, who are currently somewhat under the radar, but could easily pull together a sizeable audience and maybe even some mainstream attention in coming months. The MC/DJ duo test-drove some funky jams at Divan Orange on Thursday afternoon, including totally reconstructed reprises of TV on the Radio and Betty Davis tracks. They then opened for the Bug—who, for the record, I thought was at his weakest this time around, running the same ear-busting filter over every single track without any of the sort of sonic switch-ups that characterize fine dub sets. I digress, but the point is that from where I stood, Bonjay’s formula worked like a charm at the Portuguese Association, though I only caught the back half of that performance. Singer Alanna Stuart conjured up wild energy with her smooth, persistent voice, and DJ Pho kept the beats diverse but always well suited to the vocals, with plenty of collision between classic dancehall beats and modern laptop synth sounds.

My next earmark goes to the hypnotic Zombie Zombie, about whom I had heard virtually nothing before the festival. Zoobizarre was totally packed to the gills for the finicky Parisian acid house duo, who kept everybody waiting for about 40 minutes in the sweaty cave as they tweaked their set-up. I almost took off, but then they popped off with a psychedelic sci-fi trip of acid and Detroit-techno-style beats, with guttural grunts and howls, gradually building into a clamour of dirty synth hooks, whooshing filters and live percussion. They evoked a relatively full sound for just two guys, but I could hear the emptiness in some of it. They played it off well as pared-down minimalism, but I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if the future sees this band taking on a meatier line-up.

Other shout-outs go to Pink Skull, who showed how funky house tracks can sound like ’70s psych-rock if treated properly live, locals Unireverse, whose existential cacophony of analog experimentation lured the Cabaret crowd into a rabbit hole of squealing electronic monsters, and Golden Hands Before God, whose driving, bluesy rock set the absolute perfect tone for a certain mad, booze-soaked, downward-spiralling afterparty.

BRAVO! jack.oatmon@gmail.com