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Hosted by Patricia Petit Liang

Stories by Karl Knox, Michael Foldvari & Aloysha Nowlin

Produced by Patricia Petit Liang & Sarah Boumedda

CJLO is proud to present a brand new project: our Monthly Workshop series! We’re launching the project next week, on Wednesday, February 1, by holding our first event, featuring non-profit organization ELAN Quebec.

In an effort to facilitate the growth of the local arts and culture community in Montreal, CJLO will be holding a series of Monthly Workshops featuring a variety of technical, creative, and thematic events, all relating to the artistic scene of the city. Possibilities are endless, and we’re excited about this as much as we are about sharing it. These workshops are open to the public—which means that YOU can be part of it, too! 

This February, CJLO is happy to welcome ELAN (English-Language Arts Network), a not-for-profit organization that connects, supports, and promotes Quebec’s English-speaking artists and arts communities. Its members include artists and organizations representing a multitude of backgrounds, artistic disciplines, and regions of Quebec. ELAN encourages an evolving Quebec identity that recognizes French as the public language and celebrates social, cultural, and artistic diversity.

Come meet Amy Macdonald, the event’s lecturer, as she talks about the organization and how you can get involved! Check out the Facebook event page for all the details, and don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions. See you there!

Photo credit: ELAN Quebec.

I’m loving these Sunday evening 5 à 7 performances at Vice & Versa, a cute brick and wood-trim resto-brewery in Little Italy serving innumerable craft beers on keg and gourmet burgers, slaw, and the like. I enjoyed a wonderful pulled-pork poutine and a few exquisite white beers, surrounded by familiar smiling faces and good tunes.

High Five, Matt LeGroulx’s Balinese rhythm-inspired pop project, quietly took stage as the conversational bustle of the room hushed to a murmur. Throughout the show, Maestro LeGroulx would lay down the rhythm on any one of the many instruments, and in would come the band. Maintaining relatively simple pop structures, a bespectacled man on acoustic guitar picked and strummed expected chords while Michał Langiewicz (CJLO’s very own) kept the beat with his slick brush-style snare rattles and taps. To convey the Balinese-inspired rhythms, a bass duo plucked incredibly intricate arrangements, entirely filling each other’s empty spaces. The result is vividly lush melodic rumble bouncing around the room and in your head.

The band would get lost in trance maintaining these loops, and on this LeGroulx would layer all sorts of complementary voicings. His talk-singing vocals established catchy melodic theme, often lyrically observing the mundane and everyday, like “Taking Out the Trash,” or else finding footing in surreal poetics. LeGroulx would further explore these harmonic themes through a wailing saxophone, the knob-cranking bleeps and bloops of the synthesizer, and Zappa-esque guitar solos wet with chorus. He effortlessly hopped from one instrument to the next, and even played sax and synth simultaneously, leaving the crowd impressed, to say the least. The songs would roll along steadily like a locomotive while LeGroulx stoked the fire and let off steam (I don’t really know how trains work). A tilt of his instrument at hand acted as a visual cue, and on a dime, the band would stop, leaving a startlingly abrupt silence after such momentum.

After the show, I paid my tab and split well before any sane person’s bedtime. We need more places like this around town! Food and concerts mix ever so well as fas as I’m concerned. I guess they call it dinner and a show.

As I understand, last night’s performance was meant to be held at l’Escogriffe, but since it is currently under renovation, the event was moved to Le Cactus, a small showroom next door . Great little spot. Supposedly doubling as a dance studio, the venue’s side wall is lined entirely with full-sized mirrors, perfectly suitable for the disco ball and lasers bouncing all over the room. Unfortunately, not nearly enough people made it to last night’s performance, but this does not at all take from the music. The bands were great.

Tall Shadows, a band truly coming into their own, blows my mind everytime I see them play (I suppose I am biased as their frontman and songwriter is my beloved roommate, Owen Fairbairn). They have such a range in sound, from jazzy off-beat pop songs, to orchestral movements, to hyper-phazed droning grunge, all expertly transitioning from one to the next through the use of atmospheric samples and orchestral string parts. Laurence Gaudreau bows her cello masterfully, adding a chamber-like texture to their full sound, gracefully filling any space left empty in the music, and even coming into the forefront in their quieter arrangements. The rhythm section, Frank Gallant on bass and Brandon Goodwin on drums, is incredibly tight, their jazz backgrounds keeping the strange time changes and mood swings in focus. It allows Fairbairn to sing in perfectly crafted melody, even sprinkling in beautiful falsetto when the moment is right. Clearly inspired by his background in classical violin, he fingers spidery sweeping guitar chords through the use of counterpoint, syncopation, and cadence to arrange unexpected but unchangeable melodic and rhythmic structure, while expertly manning an arsenal of effects, resulting in one of the fullest, most interesting guitar sounds I’ve heard in some time. No need for a loop pedal here, he can make it work, exploring only the most effective melodic arrangements within the monolithic structures he creates willy-nilly. Tall Shadows has an album in the works which should be out sooner than later, and I truly hope it gets the attention it deserves. I’ve heard snippets of it here and there while he mixes in his bedroom, and I can attest that it’ll blow your socks off if like me, you find Maroon 5 unlistenable. Keep an eye out for this band in the future, you won’t regret it. Owen asked me to mention the band’s sex appeal.

On next was Monogamy, and the show took a distinct turn. Santosh Lalonde, on accordion and vocals, fronts another tough group to categorize. Definitely finding its footing in Tom Waits style cabaret music, using Black Sabbath inspired song structure and heaviness, and yet employing wavy surf-guitar to keep it fresh and jivin’, Monogamy is the kind of band that will please everyone. Just watch the pints swinging back and forth overhead. Lalonde has so much stage presence, you’ll find yourself grinning from ear to ear for as long as they’re playing. Between well-timed blasts of the dry ice machine filling the room with that godawful smell of rock’n’roll, you’ll find yourself laughing at Lalonde barking incomprehensibly as though Hunter Thompson incarnate was on stage, or else from his little comedic bits between songs involving lasers cutting through him. He and the rest of the band were truly at home on stage and changed the vibe of the small quiet crowd to a bunch of rowdy space pirates. Unfortunately, we had to take off for metro o’clock and missed the end of the set. Such are the woes of living in the Sud-Ouest.