Montreal Indie Rock | Top 3 Albums of Covid Times
Despite Covid-19 threatening to crush the spirits of Montreal musicians, these Top 3 Albums of Covid Times will hopefully help us forget that live gigs are a long lost dream, art galleries, record stores and theatres are shuttered, and adding to the ennui is François Legault’s Pandemic Logic (that last bit is an oxymoron).
A pall seems to have fallen on our city as artists and musicians notorious for burning the midnight oil, have been asked to get off the streets at an hour when some artists and musicians are just beginning their creative day. But do not despair, audiophiles. Musicians as a rule have always had to be inventive, if only to survive.
So while we may not be able to crush inside venues and thrash around to our beloved bands, Montreal Indie rock is still full of some of the world’s most talented artists and they’re determined to keep the music coming.
Therefore, here is a shortlist of some of the most listenable music from 2020 and early 2021 (aka Covid Times):
1- No Joy’s Motherhood
Once a 4 piece but now essentially a solo project by Montreal-based Jasamine White-Gluz, Motherhood was released via labels Joyful Noise and Hand Drawn Dracula. No Joy has been cited for making wild heavy shoe gaze but Motherhood is the birth of something new, a convoluted evolution of tunes, tangled beats, synths and melodies that are the musical equivalent of 2020.
Pitchfork describes Motherhood as “radical and esoteric… dream-pop with trip-hop, nu metal, and a pastiche of time-stamped ’90s club music, from early ’90s U.K. dance-rock…” Basically a perfect storm of sound for a maelstrom of a year.
2- Besnard Lakes
Speaking of storms, the Besnard Lakes dropped the double LP, The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings, and boy howdy, that title is apt. Besnard Lakes is easily one of Montreal’s most prolific bands.
Their press release describes the LP as being “a journey into (and back from) the brink: the story of the Besnard Lakes’ own odyssey but also a remembrance of others’” and what is more succinct than that? A fine rendering of life but also death, this epic soundscape is pure auditory transcendence and while it is rare that a “rock band” is capable of transporting its listener to a state of grace, that just happens to be the calling card of the Besnard Lakes.
This band delivers the creative medicine so badly needed right now, keeping us from an artistic flatline.
3- Sounds From MOTHLAND Volume I
This compilation isn’t just the best thing to come out this year; Sounds From MOTHLAND Volume 1 is actually one of the best things to come out in the last decade. Featuring local heavy hitters such as Red Mass, Paul Jacobs, and UUBBUURRUU, the compilation also has Spaceface (of The Flaming Lips) and The High Dials.
Impeccable tastemakers in the North American music scene, MOTHLAND is a collective self-described as “an extra-dimensional space, [and] a tight-knit family sharing new sounds, colours and textures through multiple art forms and unique events…”
MOTHLAND also promises to “provide visionary artists in the psychedelic, experimental and art pop genres, with an alternative label.” Well. MOTHLAND has kept that promise, and that is called Volume I, of what I can only hope is many more volumes to come.
For those who still carry a torch for soul influenced melodic mixes check out our review on the son of the Montreal streets Franky Selector carrying the flame proudly.
