In many a newspaper and magazine, journalists the world over have been singing the praises of the music scene in Montreal, Quebec. Much like Seattle before it, the city itself is identified with a cutting edge sound that captures pop culture and catapults the artists under its wings to greater heights.
The Montreal trio Plants and Animals is one of the acts riding this groundswell of attention.
They are providing opening act duties for Polaris Prize winner Patrick Watson tomorrow night at the Myer Horowitz Theatre.
Watson is another rising star in the Montreal scene, and along with fellow Polaris nominee Miracle Fortress (who opened for Stars here on Nov. 21), Plants and Animals makes its home on Secret City Records, an apt name for a label in a city where a stellar band comes out of the woodwork every week, or so it would seem.
So, are the boys comfortable with being part of the artsy, "Montreal sound?"
"I don't know if we have a say in it one way or the other really. It's everybody else that wants to talk about it and that's fine because it brings more attention to us. The spotlight is on Montreal ... We're totally happy to be a band from Montreal", says Warren Spicer, frontman of the organically named rock band. "In no way, shape or form do we wanna distance ourselves from it at all."
"It's been going on under the radar. Everybody's been working really hard for a really long time. I think that's part of it. Everybody has been working on their music for a really long time. It may seem to the outside world that hey, every couple months there's this great new band coming out of Montreal", says Spicer. "It's just the luck of the draw that spotlight is now on them."
Unlike Seattle, which provided us with the template for all of the grunge-lite peppering on rock radio now, Montreal is setting the bar for more artistically satisfying fare with bands like Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade.
Plants and Animals is typically quirky, bringing in choirs, steel guitars and chant-like harmonies to accentuate their Flaming Lips-ish acoustic pop.
One thing they are not, however, is a jam band, a label that's been slapped on them as of late. The band can get pretty groovalicious at times, but being lumped in with Phish and Ween is not what they want.
"It is one of the monikers among many others that people have cobbled together, that people have tried to come up with as a description of what we're up to. I mean there's a couple moments where we can let the music breathe a bit, but by no means are we a jam band and we don't rely on live improvising, y'know, ad nauseum to entertain our audience."
Check out this trio with Patrick Watson tomorrow night at the Myer Horowitz Theatre on the U of A campus. Tickets are $14 and are available through Ticketmaster, online at www.ticketmaster.ca or by calling 451-8000.
