The "Montreal sound" is exploding so fast that even the bands in the centre of it aren't aware it's happening. Or it could be a media creation, in which case, here's some more.

Dave Hamelin of the Stills, when asked in passing about fellow Montrealers Mobile - last week's featured Montreal rock band with a really short name that came to play at a medium-sized bar in Edmonton; the Stills play tomorrow at the U of A's Powerplant - he draws a blank.

"Really? Never heard of them," he says.

Where you been, dude? They're huge! Top 10 with a bullet.

"Who the hell are Mobile? I really don't understand. These guys are a new band? They're huge? So since I've been gone, this band is now huge and people are talking about them as being part of this scene? That's so crazy. Wow. Communications now are so quick. Everybody comes and goes in like 10 minutes. F---ing nuts."

Agreed.

Just never mind for a second that few of the Montreal bands mentioned in stories about the Montreal explosion actually live in Montreal. The Stills lived in New York, then Paris, France. Mobile moved to Toronto before they got huge.

The founders of the Arcade Fire are of Haitian and American descent. The Dears made it big in Europe.

But rest assured, Montreal shall claim them all - so will the press eager for the next trend. Has "the French-Canadian Seattle" been taken yet?

OK, needs work.

Point is, Montreal "is a good place to come from," says Hamelin. "I'm really happy about the Montreal thing, actually. People are thinking about it, people are talking about it, all the better. It's a good town. It's a strange but beautiful place."

This brings up a discussion of the effect of isolation on the originality and general health of a city's music scene (or even country; any fan of Latin music will testify that Cuba produces more great music per capita than any other country in the world).

Hamelin then asks, "Why aren't there any amazing bands from Edmonton?"

He doesn't wait for the answer, "I think Edmonton is more isolated than Montreal. But Montreal chooses to be isolated. I think that people there don't feel like they're part of Canada, to a certain extent.

"I don't know if that's the single cause of a good music scene, but Montreal is a strange place. It is its own island. It could be its own city state."

He goes on to point out Montreal's history of political "f---edupedness" - which really ought to be a legitimate term in political science - and how it shaped the musicians who grew up there.

It could explain the escapist bent of a good deal of new "Montreal rock." Or not. The studies continue.

Getting specifically to the keyboard-laden, Coldplay-meets-the-Cure music of the Stills, the band is soon to release its third record, Without Feathers - the title taken from a Woody Allen book for no good reason other than "it sounded good."

Content to remain at the very least a cult favourite, the band isn't set to follow the path of the "get a big hit or die" philosophy of the modern rock business. It's just not that kind of band.

"We never had a single, so it's good for us," Hamelin says. "Our career is not based on a single, which I'm really happy with. That's a gamble. You don't want to play Russian roulette with the single."

On the usual stupid rock 'n' roll question of how the new album is a "departure" from the old - the equivalent of a sportswriter asking an athlete if he's "come to play" - Hamelin answers patiently. To sum it up, duh, yeah, it's different.

"You know the Beatles album, Please Please Me? Then there was Sergeant Peppers. Those are pretty big changes. And from the first Clash record to London Calling is a pretty big change. If you listen to OK Computer and then you listen to Kid A, it's a pretty significant change."

All right, all right, point taken. We at least got a sense of what this guy has listened to. He also declares that the Stills will not be the kind of band that keeps putting out the same album over and over again just so they can tour and make lots of money.

"I think that's a bit backwards. We all love playing shows, but the record will last forever, or not. They have the potential. Everybody's trying to overcome death - having kids, making records, whatever."

Whether reports of the Montreal Invasion will last longer than this time next year remains to be seen.