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FASHIONABLE FLASHBACK: La Roux’s Elly Jackson

by JACK OATMON

Consistently fresh and forward-looking, MEG Montreal’s going into its 11th year of introducing beats and fads to Montreal, and this year boasts more than a few newcomers to check out as well as some underappreciated locals who have happily been integrated into the line-up. Here are the lesser-known highlights to keep in mind while out drinking, dabbling and boogying on the festival circuit.

Sprightly Guelph quintet Green Go’s style falls somewhere in the midst of the mid-decade dance-rock rabble, not so polished and moody as Metric, nor as cacophonic and unbridled as the Go! Team. The pitch is simple enough—jammy, groovy, unpretentious dance music for people who don’t like dance music, comprising suburban funk bass lines, sparse guitar, frenetic drumming, sing-along choruses and buzzing synth keys. Think of it as a bloodthirsty, juvenile Supersystem minus the African polyrhythms. That’s at l’Olympia tonight, Thursday, Aug. 6. While there, keep your ears peeled for noteworthy local talent Misteur Valaire, whose four-man sampling, tweaking, filtering and synth-punching sets aggregate equal measures of jazz, elevator music, funk, hip hop and radio pop, with atmospheric flair and technical prowess.

Picks in the park

No self-respecting new music festival could get away these days without a nod to the blossoming 8-bit scene, and MEG has duly chosen to feature dope live bit-crushing hardware tweakers NOIA, who bust out the video game jams at Divan Orange tonight. Alongside are locals Random Recipe, a rapping and beatboxing outfit backed by a barebones rhythm section and guitar, making for an effective, lightweight live R&B/pop-rock crossover.

On Friday night, keep in mind the DJ set by Warren Fischer, of electroclash innovators Fischerspooner, at Studio JPR—he’s filling in for Drop the Lime, who dropped out. It’s also worth mentioning that locals Silly Kissers, a cutesy, nostalgic indie pop outfit, appear alongside gritty new wavers Meta Gruau up the street at Divan Orange the same night.

And, of course, there is the MEG stage at Osheaga on the weekend. For my money, some of the most interesting acts appear early on in the afternoons. If you’re around at opening time on Saturday, try to catch the heavy fuzz, haunting echoes and gradual, epic soundscaping of shoegaze-y ambient live trio NLF3. But be sure to be there in time for fashionable young Brit duo la Roux, delivering their addictive, hyper-stylized, contemporary take on the attitude-laden, emotive U.K. synth groups of days gone by. Elly Jackson’s dynamic vocals, alternately shrill and forgiving, belt out clever lyrics over catchy dance beats, making for the freshest such offering out of the region since kindred spirit Goldfrapp.

E-CLASH BASH MASH: Warren Fischer

Sunday best

Sunday at Osheaga also boasts a couple of interesting tidbits. Though at first listen, the horrendously schmaltzy synthpop of Yes Giantess will likely strike you as a bad crossbreed of mall punk and ’80s movie soundtracks—which I suppose, to be fair, it pretty much is. If you’re in just the right carefree, starry-eyed mood, or if you’re a 14-year-old girl, these guys might just warm you to the cockles of your heart, make your day, flavour your ice cream or otherwise augment your serotonin levels. That is to say, it’s damn good for such a theoretically awful type of music.

For curiosity’s sake, make sure to check out mellow pop trio Miike Snow, featuring two members of production team Bloodshy & Avant, who you might not have heard of even if you’ve repeatedly been bashed over the head with songs they’ve written and produced for Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez and the like. Miike Snow produce, perhaps unsurprisingly, precision-engineered radio-friendly tunes with pristine, catchy songwriting and mildly adventurous production that borrow from late Police and Phil Collins.

Rock around the dock

And then there is the boat trip. If you’ve never been, I can’t stress enough how fun and hilarious these boating dance parties are. Something about being trapped on a water craft makes people act with total impunity, the moral anchor of the land no longer there to prevent social interaction from decaying into moronic blabbering and drug-addled cajoling. Add to that a bunch of face-crushing electro DJs and things tend to get toxic relatively quickly. All you freaky dumb blog subscribers out there be sure to look out for Parisian Boysnoize Records signee Djedjotronic, purveyor of unforgiving, garbled, bleeping, 130 bpm banger remixes. I’m also happy to report that fellow Parisian Data, who turned heads a few years ago with a timely single called “J’aime pas l’art” and then just sorta disappeared, has finally released something substantial, the full album Skywriter, and he’s also aboard the barge. He’s known for moody, operatic and aggressive electro that’s more than a little stylistically lifted from Justice, though still more than worth the listen.

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