MTL04
A Post-Mortem of Montreal’s
Indie Rock Boom
By Adam Kovac
By Adam Kovac
If 1991 was the year punk broke,
2004 was the year indie shattered.
That year saw the release of Arcade Fire’s
Funeral, Death From Above 1979’s You’re a
Woman, I’m a Machine, and Stars’ Set Yourself
on Fire. A year later, bands like Bell Orchestre
and Wolf Parade would add their own latest
releases to the mix.
Indie, that lo-fi, art-school, cool-kid-at-
the-bar hipster aesthetic once defined by
Pavement, wasn’t just breaking; it was breaking
out, redefining what pop and rock could be
just as the last vestiges of grunge and ‘90s
alt-rock took their final breaths in the form of
shamelessly mainstream acts like Nickelback
and Creed.
The music industry, eternally on the
lookout for the next Seattle, had found it. The
windy, rain-swept northwest sound, defined
by anguished vocals and sludgy guitars, was
out; in was snow, warehouse concerts, and
rock music that owed more to Dylan and
42 • C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N
Bowie than Black Sabbath.
Tastemakers declared Montreal the new
capital of what the cool kids liked, the place
where tastes would be made.
And for a while, they were right. Great
albums were released. Bands toured the world.
And then, just as quickly as it popped up, the
hype was over. Arcade Fire, who will headline
Coachella until the sun implodes, aside, the
scene did not produce any other constant
arena headliners. Most of the survivors carry
on the great tradition made possible by Can-
ada’s system of grants and CanCon laws: the
middle-class Canadian rock band.
Now, a decade-and-a-half later, with the
magazine profiles past and the bands that are
still together older, wiser, and more grizzled by
the music industry, it’s time for a post-mortem
of the Montreal scene.
Izzy Stradlin, original rhythm guitarist for the
decidedly non-indie Guns N’ Roses, once
described Los Angeles as a city you didn’t go
to, but a city where you ended up.
In the early 2000s, Montreal was the
same kind of town – a major metropolitan
area with a surplus of cheap apartments, a
steady supply of students coming from the
rest of Canada and the States to experience
that legendary French Canadian joie-de-vivre
at Concordia and McGill, a romantic bohemian
oasis that owed much of its reputation to the
sultry baritone of Leonard Cohen.
For people looking to make a career out
of music, recording and label hubs like Toronto
or New York would’ve looked like the smarter
bet. But for people looking to play more and
worry about money less, Montreal became a
logical destination. It didn’t hurt that the city
was also within driving distance of those major