Concert Reviews

Photo by the illustrious Susan Moss, courtesy of POP Montreal

The hot ticket at POP Montreal this year was undoubtedly Saturday night's triple bill at Club Soda. A sold-out crowd gathered on the corner of Saint-Laurent and Ste-Catherine street, amongst the hookers and hustlers, ready to show their love for the garage psych powerhouse, Ty Segall and his band.

For the past six years, since the demise of his last band CPC Gangbangs, Roy Vucino has been crafting an ongoing music and art project known as Red Mass. With a revolving door membership both on stage and on record, Red Mass has finally evolved into what Vucino had envisioned almost a decade ago. With a core of himself, Hannah Lewis (keyboards/vocals), Jonathan Bigras (drums), and Phillippe Caouette (bass), set to tour this summer and their first full length album, A Hopeless Noise: The Story of Diamond Girl, soon to be released, Red Mass took to the stage at Quai des Brumes on Friday night and showed all in attendance that this band is ready for the next step.

Armon Jay is a self-described hillbilly originating from Chatanooga, Tennessee. His southern accent is mild and undistinguished in a city like Montreal, but he likes to use it as a conversation pitch. Mixing stereotypes of hillbilly and urban hippy, he gulps down half a "mystique" cider, laughs at the irony of a redneck drinking a cider, then switches voices and advocates for a gluten free diet.

I never really listened to rap growing up; I had a hard time relating to the lyrics. In the last two years, however, I have developed an appreciation for the genre, and I owe most of that to Childish Gambino. Although I shared almost none of the experiences described in the lyrics from his 2011 album Camp, I related to the tone, the nerdy Nintendo and cartoon references, and the jazzy R&B music. Most of all, it was Gambino's quick wit that hooked me.

Upon entering the Théâtre Corona, I had no idea that my ticket of admission also doubled as a one-way train ticket to an elevated state of mind. Before the show, I was stressed about the school year coming to an end, and all of the exams and final papers piling up made me question whether or not going to a concert in the midst of the mayhem would serve me any good.

Nonetheless, Cut Copy and Jessy Lanza obliterated my self-doubt. They conducted a fast-paced joy ride, which allowed me to travel from a dark and troubled mind to a land of care free-joy.

Show review by Damaris Baker, CJLO Production Team

The first time I heard Stephen Malkmus was in Melbourne, Australia around nine years ago. "Post-Paint Boy" was the track, part of a compilation entitled La Revolution de Spunk. It snuggled up nicely with tracks by Sufjan Stephens, The Books, Akron Family, Anthony and the Johnsons, and Holly Throsby. 

Let's get this out of the way, I love Chiodos. I know their limitations, and I realize that a lot of their songs aren't "metal enough," but frankly, I don't care. Out of the crop of generic, long since forgotten bands that were their brethren, I think they were the closest to metal that you could get, and I think they were a gateway for a lot of people to get into "real metal," and that this fact alone is enough to establish them as a band with a great legacy.