POP Montreal Turned 25 and Brought Divan Orange Back to Life

"I think we were teenagers when we were here last," Warren Spicer told the crowd. His band, Plants and Animals, were playing the first of two sold-out nights at Divan Orange, a Montreal club that had been closed for years and came back to life for three nights during POP Montreal's 25th edition, according to Cult MTL's review of the festival.

The reopening was one of the big surprises of a festival that ran from 23 to 27 September in venues in and around Montreal's Mile End, with a lineup of 177 artists. For listeners, the week offered legends on small stages, reunions few people expected, and new names worth remembering.

A Club Reopened for Three Nights

Divan Orange sits at 4234 St-Laurent, at the corner of Rachel. It closed in the late 2010s after fines over noise complaints left it in financial trouble, Cult MTL reported in its festival preview. For the anniversary it hosted three shows in its original space: two sold-out nights with Plants and Animals, supported by Sasha Cay and Katie Moore, and a final night with the Hamilton power-pop band Superstar Crush and the local psychedelic trio Hush.

The room was not quite as regulars remembered it. Cult MTL's Dave MacIntyre described white painted walls, a makeshift table selling drinks, only one orange couch and no air conditioning, and still called sweating through the set well worth the trouble. Plants and Animals played a set full of nostalgia, quirky guitar work and big choruses, and brought on Adèle Trottier-Rivard, the partner of guitarist Nico Basque, for a Bibi Club mashup of "Le Queens".

MacIntyre wrote that it felt good to sit on that orange couch again. The festival's own announcement had promised "some excellent surprises from the past", and the Divan Orange nights were the clearest example of what that meant.

Twenty-Five Years of POP Montreal

POP Montreal was launched in 2002 by friends and colleagues who wanted to create meaningful and vibrant experiences in the city, according to The Montrealer. It is a not-for-profit festival that presents emerging and celebrated artists from around the world and champions independence in the arts.

Creative director Daniel Seligman set the tone when the programme was announced. "This year's festival has some excellent surprises from the past, a few legends, some up-and-coming gems and everything magical that makes POP Montreal the freshest fest in the land," he said in the festival's announcement.

The music was only part of it. Film POP, Art POP, the POP Symposium of talks and panels, Kids POP and the Puces POP market all returned, and Film POP screened documentaries including I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco and Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore?, according to See Rock Live. The celebrations also ran a day past the festival, with a Heated Rivalry live show and book launch on 28 September featuring the author Rachel Reid, Billboard Canada reported.

The Reunions Listeners Came For

Think About Life played Rialto Hall on 26 September, their first show in nine years, and it sold out in advance, Montreal Rocks reported. The band had played POP Montreal several times, most recently in 2017 at the Piccolo Rialto, according to Cult MTL. Pigeon Phat and the younger band Underpass opened.

Cult MTL's review caught the night's warmest moment. Underpass singer Jojo Seligman joined Martin Cesar for "Johanna", and Seligman's mother took the mic to explain that when Jojo was still in her belly, she could feel her kick when the song played at the band's original launch party.

Montreal label Secret City Records marked its own 20th anniversary with two nights at Sala Rossa. The first was headed by Klô Pelgag and Basia Bulat, and the second included Shad and La Force. Shad turned a 20-minute slot into a mini-retrospective, Cult MTL's Darcy MacDonald wrote, mixing songs from his Secret City catalogue with older ones, practising his French with the crowd, bringing on Bye Parula to back him and even slipping in an a cappella.

Uffie, whom Cult MTL described as a blueprint for a sound later taken to the mainstream, played the basement of the Piccolo Rialto. "Can you all come to the front? This is awkward," she told a spread-out crowd, before a set that took them back to the late 2000s and previewed a handful of new songs.

Legends on Small Stages

Sister Nancy, whom Cult MTL describes as Jamaica's first internationally recognised female dancehall deejay, played a sold-out basement show at 1 a.m. At 65, she was still kicking her feet in the air, the review said. It was her third time at POP Montreal, and the documentary about her life, Bam Bam: The Sister Nancy Story, is a Canadian production with scenes shot during her last visit to the festival.

No set of hers is complete without "Bam Bam", released nearly 45 years ago and sampled by countless artists since. "The song has been used, abused, but never refused," she says of it.

The reggae veteran Jah Cutta, who has opened for some of the genre's greats in Montreal over three decades, celebrated his birthday on stage with family in the room and sang an emotional tribute to his late son. Nardwuar the Human Serviette, the Vancouver interviewer and newly appointed member of the Order of Canada, gave a talk at the Rialto about perseverance, and handed out old Québécois records from the 1960s during a trivia game.

The bill carried plenty more history: Luna playing songs from both Luna and Galaxie 500, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Julie Doiron, Spencer Krug, and Martha Wainwright and Bells Larsen on the Rialto rooftop over the final weekend.

The New Names Worth Remembering

In a year rooted in nostalgia, the discoveries mattered just as much. Infinite Coles, the son of Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah, played the festival's Bizarre Ball ballroom showcase, and Cult MTL described a 20-minute set that showed him as a rapping, dancing and singing triple threat.

The British rapper JayaHadADream won over a well-packed Ministère in her first Canadian performance, and the Montreal hip-hop group 110% played an outdoor show at Marché des Possibles on the Friday evening. Both drew some of the review's warmest praise.

Some of the best moments were the smallest. The singer-songwriter Pataugeoire, born Agathe Dupéré, played to about 20 to 25 people at Shirley Temple Studio, in a show so under the radar it was not even listed in the festival app. Sook-Yin Lee, the former MuchMusic VJ, brought her album 72RHR to Casa del Popolo, a record on which every song is set to 72 beats per minute, the average resting human heartbeat.

Infinity Song, the New York sibling group, closed the festival. Cult MTL framed the week in a line that works as a summary of the whole event: discovery festivals like POP Montreal are built for "I saw them before they were famous" moments.

Why POP Montreal Still Matters to Listeners

Twenty-five years in, POP Montreal is a reminder that a city's music lives in small rooms: a reopened club, a basement at 1 a.m., a practice space at the end of a maze of corridors. The festival puts local favourites and international guests on the same bills, and lets listeners wander between them.

At TipTop.music, we think the best part of a festival like this is what happens after it, when a listener who found a new favourite in a small room goes home and keeps listening. Our view is that those listeners should be able to support the artists they discover directly. That is the idea behind a tip on every play.

We saw the same appetite for live discovery when more than 70,000 people turned out for amapiano. For POP Montreal, the next quarter century starts with a club that got its orange couch back, at least for three nights.