2008 Woodie Awards
Touted by Rolling Stone as "one of the best and most original guitarists in America," Gary Lucas is the type of under-the-radar artist who, amidst all the Pop Montreal ballyhoo, stands as one of the best kept secrets of this year's festival. Also praised by the culturati at The New Yorker as "the thinking man's guitar hero," he has amassed an extraordinary musical catalogue.
"Everything kind of happened in reverse," says Young Galaxy's singer/guitarist Stephen Ramsey of the band's evolution. Starting off as a "studio project" with girlfriend and fellow songwriter Catherine McCandless, Young Galaxy had signed a record deal with über-hip Toronto label Arts & Crafts and recorded their full-length, eponymous debut before playing a gig in their current, sextet form.
Bound to be a huge Pop Montreal highlight, Final Fantasy is the creation of musical mastermind, and rather strange individual, Owen Pallett. His solo project is named after the video game of the same title and carries a similar air of epic heroism; the latest album, He Poos Clouds, sounds as if it it is aimed at curing its listeners of suicidal thoughts.
While many 'music and art' festivals are long on the music and short on the art, Pop Montreal puts itself out to offer a full menu of tasty visual treats. True to its musical roots, however, Art Pop focuses on multi-disciplinary works that combine the audio with the visual and that cut through the ever-looming high/low artistic binary.
With a nomination for "Most Promising Entertainer" at the World Reggae Awards, a new video in circulation on MTV and Much Music and a gig performing with club remix favourite Elephant Man, Canada's newest female reggae starlet, Empire Isis, is ready for the spotlight.
"I am curious about my neighbour," intones Theodore Bikel. "I hope he is curious about me." Bikel, an actor famous for his starring roles in Fiddler on the Roof and Frank Zappa's 200 Motels (not to mention his role as Worf's father on Star Trek: The Next Generation), is one of the many collaborators on Ghettoblaster, the latest multi-linguistic, multi-cultural offering from Montreal hip-hop artist Socalled.
Electro-punk rock band Hot Hot Heat rolls into Montreal this Sunday to promote their third mainstream album, Happiness Ltd. 2002's Make Up the Breakdown and 2005's Elevator were both popular and spawned a series of head-bopping singles such as "Middle of Nowhere.
At the beginning of September, Vancouver band Bend Sinister released their long awaited self-titled EP. They have been together since the high school and their main influence is 70s rock. From the likes of Elton John, Queen and Supertramp, lead guitarist Naben Ruthnum explained that it is these bands in particular that have been the main source of inspiration for Bend Sinister.
Earlimart's Ariana Murray, (for whom Pop Montreal is a hometown return) and Aaron Espinoza have been knocking around for almost a decade now. Their newest album Mentor Tormentor was released only last month, but fans have been quick to lap up the fresh material.
A lot of people will try to tell you that certain bands defy categorization. Rarely is this really the case. But when you set to work picking apart a group's musical influences, however multifarious, and are left with untidy piles of post-punk, new wave, music concrete and unstable quantities of kraut, garage and skiffle rock, it might be safe to say that the band in question possesses a sound which cannot be easily gleaned.
Making Pop Montreal nothing if not a well-rounded festival, this year's Film Pop features over forty films from Canada, USA, Japan, Norway, Mexico and Australia. Culled from over 300 submissions, the selections include features, shorts and, in keeping with the overarching theme, music videos.
While the indie moniker has become somewhat of a misnomer of late, referring more to a style than to actual commercial independence, a band that starts its own label legitimately qualifies as the real thing. Code Pie, proprietors of their own Flagless Records, are just such a band.
The Canadian music scene can sometimes be an inbred crowd, overflowing with handholding, promiscuous producers and guitarists that may as well switch bands between curtain calls. Though this gives us a chance to hear from our favorite musicians over and over again, according to Ryan Lenssen from The Most Serene Republic, this "incestuous relationship may be working now, but will ultimately be the downfall of Canadian music…it's disgusting really, people have to stand on their own and be individuals.
