Additional Information
POP Montréal is celebrating 25 years of DIY and artistic vision. The festival remains an international beacon of indie music culture; spending several evenings there is invariably enlightening, enriching, exciting, and even liberating! It’s truly an event that celebrates the intercultural and welcoming nature of Montreal life. That’s why we’ve selected three daily recommendations from Pop MTL’s head programmer and founder, Dan Seligman. Here are his Saturday September 26th three picks.
Think About Life + Pigeon Phat + Underpass, Rialto Hall, 8:30 PM
DAN : The Think About Life show is sold out. They were like an important band in the mid 2000 – from 2005 to 2012. Everyone loved their ecstatic mix of punk-rock and electronics. And then they kind of just disappeared. Well, it didn’t last very long, and they were supposed to be the next thing after the Montreal sound from the Mile-End and the Plateau – Arcade Fire, The Dears, Wolf Parade, etc. Then Think About Life sort of imploded: keyboardist Graham Van Pelt kept making music under the moniker Miracle Fortress. Matt Shane teaches at Concordia, he stopped drumming. And then the singer Martin Cesar had this solo project called Dishwasher, where we would make kind of experimental electronic music, but not really playing shows or anything like that. But they remain one the classic Pop Montreal bands.
I actually composed the whole bill, my daughter Johanna’s band is opening: Underpass. And then my brother Aaron with Pigeon Phat. We can see it beyond the nepotism angle, but there is also the family angle, Pop Montreal being a family. When I think about this festival and how I started in music. I would have not achieved it without the influence of my older brother’s band (Stars) . I wouldn’t have started a music festival if I hadn’t started working with Stars and gone on the road and all that stuff. So from the beginning, it was about family and friends. Well, you know, we don’t have to be shy of it on special occasions.
And this is very much a celebration. For instance, my daughter, Johanna, was named after the Think About Life song from their album Family that was released in 2008. And I was at the show with my partner and they were playing that song. And it was the first time that like we felt a bit like the baby kick in her stomach. And so and then my brother, Aaron, my middle brother is in this band Pigeon Fat, which was also kind of like a very obscure band from about 10- 15 years ago, one of the members was in this band called Donkey Heart with the singer from Think About Life. So they’re kind of all interconnected. There’s like an interconnection between all the bands of this bill. And I think the show will really be like a celebration of the different eras of Montreal music.
A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Theatre Rialto, Salle Exclaim!, 8 PM
Photo by Vera Marmelo
DAN: The 2nd pick A Winged Victory for the Sullen. They’re kind of ambient, ambient and neoclassical composers, some call it neoambient. It’s also a little droney. It makes me remember Stars of the Lid, a band that we had done shows for over the years, of which one at the Masonic Temple. They were a duo, Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie, and one of them died. Then Adam started A Winged Victory for the Sullen with Dustin O’Halloran. So it’s a similar genre wise somewhere between post rock, ambient, minimalism and neoclassical. Very meditative and trippy. And it’s done very, very well, these guys are professionals. It’s going to sound really great. Well, hopefully the visuals and the music will be excellent. I’m really excited about that. I’ve worked with Adam from the band over the years and we’ve kept in touch about doing other shows and I contacted him around Covid and obviously everything was delayed for like three or four years. So I’m happy to have them back.
Sister Nancy, Piccolo Rialto, 11PM
DAN: And then for the final pick, Sister Nancy. I think it is an obvious one. This will be her third time playing the festival, and we did one other off show. She’s an exceptional performer, she obviously has the one song that everyone knows, which is kind of given her like commercial success, which is an amazing story in itself. But as a performer, she’s still a master, you know. She’s like an old school dancehall, you know, like she is opening or at the end? No, she’s the final one. So you’re going to have to stay until two o’clock. Well, we scheduled it for one, we used to do two.
