True Currency | 5 Montreal bands you’ve never heard
Navigating a music community as vast as Montreal’s can be daunting, but thanks to yours truly, you’re about to be turned onto a few good locals. And hey, just because you’ve never heard of them, doesn’t mean that others haven’t.
With this undercurrent of bar-raising musicianship, it begs the question: What will be the next musical trend, after our peers adorned in George-Costanza jackets, four-paneled hats and Levis jeans run out of stage gimmicks? Perhaps one of the artists listed here will come up with something more innovative than yet another analogue synth jam:
1. Milo McMahon
McMahon is one of those classic songwriters who kicks out the pure jams. Don’t be deterred by the term “song-writer,” though. This ain’t some campfire acoustic stuff. His latest EP “Gone Too Long,” was produced with Broken Social Scene’s Dave Newfeld, and features members from Montreal band SUUNS and Blood and Glass. It’s loud, it’s fun, it’s pretty.
2. Jesse MacCormack
Using the powerful force of minimalism, combined with smoking vocals and beautiful melodies, Jesse MacCormack released Crush on October 2014, and I can’t stop listening. I like it when musicians make music that is wholly their own expression, and not just more formulaic, been-there-heard-that shit. Jessi has something that is all him, and you need to hear it.
3. CROSSS
I’m depressed to admit I missed their last Montreal show with Viet Cong at Le Ritz (I’m a fool!) but luckily someone brought back their album and I had the privilege to chuck it on the record player. Side B first. I thought I’d perished and gone to Hades, surrounded by hooded cult members cheering me on.
Though I wouldn’t cite Crosss as “easy listening,” I think making easy music is fucking lazy anyway. Therefore, bring on the dark and weird, the moody and beautiful, black bat clouds of melody, herds of headless horsemen stampeding on my cranium in a flock of grisly sound! Listen to Crosss! These imaginative metaphors are utterly worthless!
4. Kurvi Tasch
Well, well, well. The writers at Vice’s NOISEY finally hired someone who isn’t a knuckle-dragging illiterate, obsessed with celebrity Instagram fashion.
I like what NOISEY wrote about Kurvi Tasch, but I like Kurvi Tasch’s music more; I guess I would say that it’s thoroughly beautiful.
Because NOISEY already took all the good adjectives, if you want a mouthful of descriptive wanking, go read what they have to say instead.
Just listen to their music, fuck.
5. ELEPHANT STONE
When I think about psychedelic music, I DON’T think of those snivelling little brats stomping their reverb pedals and getting written up by Pitchfork. I DO, however, think about Elephant Stone. Why? Because they actually take the sound of a psychedelic trip and infuse it with sitar and fuzz, in a perfect blend of old Eastern myth and modern day innovative jam outs. Listen to it.
