Dirty Beaches - Lord Knows Best (live Pop Montreal)
I recorded this live via phone, so it ain’t pretty but you get the point. Alex Zhang Hungtai plays a mean live show. His material is much more raw and noisy, a world of difference from Badlands in the best of ways. The experience feels almost intimate and carnal, you’ll just have to catch him live yourself.
Below is my Polaroid Pop Montreal 2011 chronicle. Enjoy.
Frankie Rose opening for…
Dirty Beaches. Hands down coolest kid, best performance of the festival. Alex has two band members now deepening his engulfing wall of sound playing drums & percussion and one “sax offender.”
Seriously Alex is just one sweet dude, nice enough to pose for a shot pre-show.
d’Eon jams out opening with CFCF for…
Sleep ∞ Over plays beautiful tunes for us amongst taxidermied beasts and neon blacklite oragomi forests. Sounds dark and sweet enough to melt your brain and heart into one.
Best after party in town at La Baraque with three more bands playing till 5am. All local, all French. Can’t remember the name of these girls ^^^ for the life of me, but the name translation: ridiculous and pretentious dancing girls.
Grass Widow may have put on the best sounding show out of everyone I saw. These girls rock hard, and play their instruments so damn well all while harmonizing their three beautiful voices as one. They covered Mannequin by Wire, effing brilliant. You can pick that up on a their latest Milo Minute 7”
The Raincoats s/t LP from 1979 has fast become a favorite record of mine over the past year on constant rotation. So a deciding factor of the Pop Montreal migration was to see them specifically. As I said s/t LP came out in 1979. Maybe they were in their early 20s at the time of its release…you get where I’m goin. And yet you close your eyes and their voices and instruments, especially Ana’s voice, sound like its straight out of 1979. Major props to them for rocking like they always have and will; it was most memorable.
Special treat for the final show of The Raincoats touring with Grass Widow. Ana invites the girls on stage during encore performance of Fairytale in the Supermarket to sing along. Super Rad.
