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mid- ‘ 90s , the scene was extremely different from what it is now . For example , musically , a lot of it was much more stripped down .”
With few record labels of much note for Anglophone artists , home recording not yet affordable to anyone with a MacBook , the scene revolved around the few non-payto-play venues that hired original bands and people running small recording facilities . Lightburn points to Howard Bilerman , a Grammy-winning engineer and producer and one-time drummer for Arcade Fire , as one of those figures . Bilerman would go on to found Hotel2Tango , a studio that ’ s played host to everyone from Hey Rosetta ! to King Khan to Owen Pallett .
“ There were a few people around ,” remembers Lightburn . “ It only takes a few people . All our early recordings , I would go to Howard Bilerman ’ s studio back when it was still called Mom and Pop Sounds and I would record there , then I ’ d run out of money and he would offer to let me work at the studio to pay off the rest of my bill . Shit like that meant a huge thing .”
What the city lacked in the proper channels , it made up in gumption . Once the home of Montreal ’ s legendary shmata business and immigrant communities , the Plateau neighbourhood was instead sprouting venues like Casa Del Popolo ( co-owned by Godspeed bassist Mauro Pezzente ) and Jailhouse Rock in formerly industrial or commercial buildings . Alongside Hotel2Tango , facilities like Breakglass Studios , owned by Jace Lasek of the
Besnard Lakes , were helping bands get their sound together . If people went to New York or Toronto as mercenaries to get noticed , the ones who came to Montreal ended up making it their true home .
“ I think what really emerged at that time , which is maybe the uniting force is these artists and people in the music industry is , instead of , ‘ I ’ m going to get successful and move to New York or L . A .,’ it was like , ‘ I ’ m going to have a little success and like Jace Lasek of the Besnard Lakes , I ’ m going to open Breakglass ,” says Seligman .
With studios , venues , and jam spaces opening up , it created a sort of creative loop . Newer bands like Hollerado , which formed in the Ottawa suburbs , came later and found support in organizations like Pop Montreal .
“ It was just an exciting place . It was exciting to play music there , support other bands , and go to shows ,” says Hollerado frontman
Menno Versteeg . “ One Pop Montreal , we rented out this apartment and threw a three-day party with 12 kegs . We had free nachos for everyone and we got all these bands to play . It was the kind of thing you couldn ’ t really do . I couldn ’ t see that working in downtown Toronto .”
Music scenes are the result of slow builds . Socioeconomic factors that go back decades combine with geography , weather , and a thousand other things to make the conditions necessary for an artistic scene . But for the average music fan , picking apart the catalysts that made the British Invasion happen is boring . The scenes , in all their complexity , will get boiled down to a few iconic moments or images : The Beatles playing Ed Sullivan for the first time , the opening shots of the “ Smells Like
Wolf Parade
Teen Spirit ” music video , Jack and Meg White ’ s red-and-white , are-they-siblings-or-married aesthetic .
For the Montreal scene , that iconic moment was the day Spin magazine ’ s February 2005 issue hit newsstands .
Headlined “ The Next Big Scene ,” the fivepage spread touted a forebearer ( Godspeed You ! Black Emperor ), the usual rock suspects ( Arcade Fire , The Dears , Sam Roberts , Stars ), a DJ ( Kid Koala ), and a few acts that history will likely label also-rans .
The magazine even drew a handy map of the small stretch of St-Laurent Blvd ., previously best-known internationally for famed smoked meat joint Schwartz ’ s , where much of the musical activity was taking place – clubs like Cafe Campus and Casa Del Popolo and hangouts like the still-popular Bifteck and now-defunct Korova ( now home to a pinball arcade ).
The article conveyed the excitement of the time – wander into a venue and hear the next big thing ! Grab a cheap beer and bowl of free popcorn at Bifteck and maybe you ’ ll catch a glimpse of one of The Unicorns buying The Stills a drink !
“ I thought that was a pretty good representation of the Montreal scene ,” says Boeckner . “ It was very chaotic and there was a lot of booze and everybody was pretty friendly .”
But the scene was more fractured than it appeared . Over time , the popular conception of Montreal ’ s indie music has been seen in Arcade Fire-ian terms : bombastic songwriting , orchestral instrumentation , a focus on mood and atmosphere over conventional hooks and pop songcraft .
“ I always felt there was definitely a divide between the upper-middle class Toronto people who moved here to do indie rock and then the B . C . people . It seemed segregated in a lot of ways ,” Boeckner offers . “ In cultural history , hindsight has a way of blending everything together into a coherent narrative , but for us , we still get tagged with this orchestral mid-2000s rock thing , but if you look at it objectively , we were never really like that .”
As Lightburn explains , by the time the world was paying attention , the bands were touring too much to form any real bonds , social or musical . While he and his bandmates developed friendships with some other groups like Stars , he points out that he mostly learned about what was happening in the city by perusing magazines in airports while on the road .
“ We missed so much ,” he says . “ You would hear about a band and you ’ d have no idea they were from Montreal , like Wolf Parade . I didn ’ t know they were from Montreal until
PHOTO : SHANE MCCAULEY
44 • CANADIAN MUSICIAN