When it’s cold outside and you’re full of bagels, sometimes you just wanna go where everybody knows your name. Last night, that place was charming resto Casa Del Popolo for a nine-bands-and-counting Blocks Recording Club showcase that was like a mini Toronto reunion. Starting the night with geek-chic élan, local comedian David Dineen-Porter, a.k.a. PDF Format, charmed guests with extensive, hilarious concert banter. An explanation for the back-story behind chip tune track “We Shall Krill” (a boy takes a bearded tree-whale back to the sea to chomp down on krill, obviously) was especially funny, particularly when Porter recruited a member of Brides to sing the chorus. With two microphones and a charged Gameboy, a cover of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” hit home as Porter harmonized with himself through a microphone augmented by a vocoder. It was one band down, eight to go — though Katie Stelmanis reportedly cancelled after her bus broke down on the road, quelle domage.
Best Montreal purchase yet? A floppy fur-lined lumberjack hat that makes me look like Frances McDormand’s pregnant cop in Fargo. I needed it for the long, cold bike ride down St. Laurent for Fever Ray’s close-to-last-ever show at Metropolis, an expansive, elegant venue that makes Massey Hall look like your high-school auditorium. In what would either be the greatest or most terrifying show if you were on mushrooms, Fever Ray’s theatricality never outshone the mysterious, ambient drones of her voice. Still this was a production that included a fog machine that near blanketed the stage and 50-foot lasers that appeared to hurtle out in front of you. Ray even entered the stage with a hulky wildebeest costume that caused “Mon dieu!” responses all the way through the balcony. Bongo percussion gave the band’s lilting electronica a Tropicalia flare, though I couldn’t shake the feeling that this show was oddly akin to the fantasy sex den Tom Cruise stumbles upon in Eyes Wide Shut. No wonder I Killed My Mother director Xavier Dolan told me that this was the show to see at a Greek social club–cum-espresso hotspot earlier that day as Canadiens fans screamed during the first hockey game of the season.
Pop Montreal has a history of making musicians relevant again, and no one’s in need of positive press than Juice Crew member/sham Ph.D student Roxanne Shante. Though we won’t get the full story of her life until tomorrow’s keynote speech, Shante took stage after a near 30-minute delay soundtracked by an amiable DJ at the dingy Club Lambi. “If I’m gonna hip-hop, I gotta feel hip-hop,” said the squeaky-voiced MC from Queensbridge, switching up her boots for old school Adidas and layering on the gold chains. Yet aside from a brief rendition of her old school fare (where’s “Roxanne’s Revenge” at?), Shante was more interested in giving props to old school hip-hop, in an at-first endearing, then bloody annoying game of “Name That Hip-Hop Song.” “If you know this motherfucking song, let me hear you sing along,” pipped Shante to tracks by LL Cool J, Salt N’ Pepa and Biz Markie as we threw our hands up in the air, eventually in desperation. Freestylin’ rhymes like “here for y’all” and “Montreal,” Shante was a friendly though disappointing performer, though her flirting with the crowd by way of deeming us “sexy-ass Canadians” was a nice sentiment.
The place to be on St. Laurent in the wee hours was apparently La Salle Verte — a grimier, more fluorescent version of Toronto’s Green Room, where Chain and the Gang member Ian Svenonius was holding court as the soul dance party’s DJ. Though the indie-celeb appearances were off the hook (I spotted Slim Twig, Diamond Rings and Cadence Weapon slow dancing with a carnation behind his ear), Svenonius was trying to initiate a competitive dance contest to an all-soul playlist. When asked for comment, all the iconic rocker could do was make love. “You’re so cute,” he told me, moving in for a kiss. When in Montreal, do as the Washington post-hardcore musicians do?