The Sharp Things. Metric Melon Galia The Sadies Julie Doiron

Last year's first edition of the annual POP Montreal festival was an unqualified success. Expectations were very high for this year's festival as headliners along the lines of Queens of the Stone Age, Buck 65, Black Dice and Hawksley Workman were confirmed in the weeks preceding the official kick-off. Less impressive were the rigors of the schedule, which found many big-name acts competing for an audience. The test would be less a question of finding the "it" showcase on any given night than how ably I could race from venue to venue.

Thursday's opening night line-up was dense -- too dense -- and it meant that some pretty big names were going to have to be ignored. Almost purely for the sake of nostalgia, I decided to start the weekend with Sloan's headlining spot at Club Soda. While I wasn't hoping for high art, I wasn't prepared for just how sketchy things would be. My fingers crossed for a sprinkling of bona fide classics in what I presumed would be a sea of marginal newer material -- a few oldies offered up like discarded morsels of a half-eaten meal. "Coax Me" and "People of the Sky" from the Cancon classic Twice Removed were skeletal figures, yet pointed up the failure of the deluge of tracks from the recently released Action Pact. Bassist/self-appointed frontman Chris Murphy, whose throat was shredded from a chest cold, told the crowd, "I'm not letting my voice stop me from having a good time, so neither should you." Bewildered, I couldn't help but wonder how this was supposed to be a reassurance when song after song was croaked out, stripped of the dense harmonies and playfulness that once characterized the band. Things only went from bad to worse when a few drunken imbeciles started making trouble during the set, prompting Murphy to stop the show, turn up the house lights and search futilely for a security guard to remove the troublemakers. I'd had enough.

Racing from Club Soda and the Sloan debacle, I assumed there was nowhere for the evening (and weekend) to go but up. Current buzz-band Metric, home of pin-up girl vocalist Emily Haines, who most recently made a name for herself as the female vocalist on Broken Social Scene's stellar You Forgot In People, tore through a set of tunes that struck me as a more accessible, less aggressive and decidedly more artful version of the sound Yeah Yeah Yeahs have recently made their name with -- but it ultimately became an odd sort of Yeah Yeah Yeahs cum No Doubt karaoke show. All a matter of opinion, I suppose, since the sell-out crowd couldn't get enough and seemed genuinely disappointed when it came time for them to call it a night. (I should note that even within the context of the generally always gorgeous Montreal crowds, this Blue Skies Turn Black event attracted an especially beautiful crowd of people.)

Montreal-based Stars closed the evening with their brand of syrupy pop. The hometown crowd was interested, excited and appreciative. But enough was enough -- it was time for some sleep.

Friday night was going to be considerably more difficult to juggle, as both New York-based The Sharp Things and Montreal's The Besnard Lakes would complete their opening sets in support of current "it" band Broken Social Scene, only moments before Belgium's brilliant Melon Galia were scheduled to take the stage a twenty-minute stroll across town. With every square inch of the stage filled to brimming with their ten-piece ensemble (featuring a string section that doubled as a back-up singers, three guitarists and two brass players), The Sharp Things's Perry Serpa gave both Burt Bacharach and Neil Diamond a run for their money with a truly awe-inspiring collection of epic songs that seemed culled from the great American songbook. The Besnard Lakes somehow managed to win over the very same audience with a wall of sound that recalled everything from Swirlies and Low to The Lapse. But within minutes of their final wail of feedback, I was off to a hastily constructed venue that had been dubbed "The Grey Room" for the duration of the festival. Melon Galia was waiting.

Melon Galia had arrived in Canada only days earlier to play a couple of warm-up shows before their headlining set at POP Montreal. It seemed foolish to pass up the chance to see Belgium's answer to Belle and Sebastian. The punters who weren't swayed by the hype machine peddling the Broken Social Scene show as the festival's centrepiece were rewarded by more than an hour of material, comprised of new and old versions of songs featured on the stunning Les embarras du quotidien. For the duration of this mini-tour, singer-songwriter Thierry De Brouwer and bassist-vocalist Aurelie Muller were accompanied by a drummer and keyboardist, both of whom took turns on other instruments ranging from jazz-inflected acoustic guitar to trumpet to percussion. Tears were flowing freely down some audience members' cheeks during the set's most poignant and romantic moments, while all in attendance rose to their feet for a rambunctious encore that confirmed the group as more than just a gaggle of twee shut-ins. With a sound that reflects the grandest moments of If You're Feeling Sinister in far more brilliant light than Stewart Murdoch and company could ever hope to recapture, Melon Galia offered evidence of why many critics (present company included) consider them to be on the vanguard of delicate chamber pop.

Saturday afternoon seemed to mark the arrival of Indian summer with sunshine and high temperatures, but it was not to last -- a horrible thunderstorm whipped through the city during the evening and pretty much forced me to pick a single venue and stick with it for the entire night. Thank heavens for The Sadies, Canada's alt-country heroes (but don't let them hear you call them that). From the surf-twang of a few fan-favourite instrumentals to the traditional country ballads and four-on-the-floor rockers, Dallas and Travis Good led their merry band through what was surely one of the most energized sets of the festival and left the dedicated crowd at the underwhelming venue, Le Swimming, spinning with excitement for an early return.

After three nights of sweaty balls-out rock, orchestral pop, psychedelically tinged noise and cow polk from alt-folks, it seemed best to skip out on the frenzied masses attending Queens of the Stone Age and Black Dice in exchange for the Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar showcase, featuring Jorma Whittaker, Aspera, Swearing At Motorists and one of my all-time personal faves, the ever-adorable and alarmingly gifted Julie Doiron.

Doiron played a set of material that touched almost all of her half-dozen proper releases. Highlights included material taken from Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars, specifically the mournful "Gone Gone" and the playful "The Best Thing For Me". The always heartbreaking "Sending The Photographs" met with a very excited response, and a new track, "The Songwriter", found the songstress waxing self-consciously in a decidedly unromantic way. It's a shame that La Petite Campus was the chosen venue -- with an all-night dance party taking place in the venue upstairs, Doiron was forced to deal with regular interruptions. She did so with good humour and a spark of charisma that endeared her (as always) to the patient and attentive audience.

Swearing At Motorists closed the evening as a one-man band (a very, very drunk Dave Doughman made the festival appearance a solo mission in his partner's absence), which was somehow fitting, especially since Doughman's on-stage antics entertained the bookish crowd that was heading for the door after Doiron said farewell. In the wee hours of the morning, I hit a favourite watering hole on St-Laurent to toast POP's success and speak excitedly of what next year might offer.

Article by Mike Baker.