MONTREAL, PQ — Should you ever require additional evidence of what distinguishes our neighbours to the east from the rest of the country, look not to federal election polls, or even the campaign posters affixed to the lampposts on St. Laurent, most of which are defaced, save for those bearing the mug of Gilles Duceppe. No, to truly quantify the difference between Canada’s two solitudes, look to the current touring itinerary of Burt Bacharach. In Ontario, Bacharach is an entertainer, playing songs and cracking jokes to the supper-club crowd at Casino Rama. But here in Montreal, he is granted the deity status that his deep songwriting repertoire has surely earned him: his Friday night Pop Montreal performance is held in the city’s most opulent, jaw-droppingly gorgeous cathedral, the Eglise St-Jean Baptiste (sure, Bacharach’s Jewish but, hey, so was Jesus, and that guy’s face is everywhere in the church). The choice of venue couldn’t have been coincidental: when Bacharach stands up from his piano between songs to regale the silently rapt audience with humorous anecdotes about his days studying at McGill or his tenure in the Brill Building song factory, the intended effect was like that of a god stepping down from his elevated perch to commune with us mere mortals.

Bacharach was both the most famous and most unlikely booking for Pop Montreal’s seventh edition (Oct. 1-5), and while his talk-show-slick 10-piece band at times oversold the schmaltz, the very opportunity to see a living legend in one of this country's most gorgeous rooms underscores why we make the annual pilgrimage up the 401, despite no lack of entertainment options back home (Nuit what?): to slip into a parallel universe where pop music’s golden gods, indie hipsterati and avant-garde underclass are placed on equal worshipful footing.

With each year, it becomes more evident why Pop Montreal is the only club-crawl music festival in North America that features its host city in its brand name, because no other music festival goes to such great lengths to incorporate local history, architecture and infiltration ideology into its programming. Sure, if you were just looking to sidle up to pogoing bodies and smash your head to the punk rock in a small, sweaty club, the festival had you covered, most notably with the Weird Punk line-ups (headed by Baltimore’s Death Set, Brookyln’s Japanther and local noise terrors AIDS Wolf) that transformed Le Divan Orange into a humidor all weekend long (or maybe everyone was trying to escape the sub-10-degree weather outside). But as always, the most memorable Pop Montreal shows were the ones held in places where you’re really not supposed to see shows.

If Bacharach’s Friday night performance exemplified Pop Montreal’s reverence for the sacred, then maverick Montreal MC Socalled (a.k.a. Josh Dolgin) represented for the profane with his Porn Pop spectacle amid the faded glamouor of the Cinema L’Amour. The show — a tribute to un-sung ’70s gay-porn auteur Toby Ross — was in effect a coming-out party for an artist who’s received more attention for his musical explorations (blurring the boundaries between hip-hop, klezmer and dub) than his sexual ones; a cry of “I love you Socalled!” from a female admirer was answered by Dolgin with a quick “sorry lady!” Alongside a backing band that included Owen Pallett (a.k.a. Final Fantasy), HILOTRONS vocalist Mike Dubue and Bell Orchestre’s Stef Schneider, Dolgin recreated the golden-oldies soundtrack to Ross’ seminal (ahem) skin-flick Cruisin’ 57 (which is sort of like American Graffiti but with way more cock-sucking). Even if the concept had run its course by the time we hit the technical-delayed intermission before the second reel, at the very least, I don’t think I’ll ever hear “Tequila” in quite the same way again.

But really, a dingy Plateau porno-house was only the second most creepy location I found myself in all weekend. Top honours goes to the seventh-floor Masonic Temple on St Marc, where The Dears reintroduced themselves to their hometown following a tumultuous year that saw band leader Murray Lightburn and keyboardist wife Natalia Yanchak parting ways with their supporting cast of the past eight years. Appropriate to the choice of venue, the performance felt more like secret-society meeting than rock show, with the newly reconstituted seven-piece band — featuring ex-Land of Talk guitarist Chris McCarron and Pony Up bassist Lisa Smith — stationed in the middle of the room and facing one another, while the audience were housed in the wooden pews lining the walls.



In sharp contrast to the upper-deck anthems of their 2006 release Gang of Losers, The Dears’ upcoming album Missiles is a more insular, sprawling affair that doesn’t boast any obvious singles. But the new band ably coaxed out the pop accessibility of songs like “Money Babies” and the two-part Yanchak/Lightburn duet “Crisis 1 & 2,” while the stratospheric slow-build of “Lights Off” further confirmed what we already knew: that The Dears aren’t trying be the next Smiths, but the next Pink Floyd.

But Pop Montreal’s most unconventional venues weren’t just reserved for pop legends and local luminaries. Throughout the weekend, Friendship Cove — a squat space located above a bicycle shop in an industrial Old Montreal neighbourhood— hosted well-stocked line-ups of insurgent indie-rock acts from across the country, including this weekend’s favourite discovery, Japandroids. With their two-man guitar/drums distorto-pop attack, the band initially resemble a Vancouver answer to No Age, but the high-kickin’ acrobatics of frontman Brian King and witty, self-effacing repartee with drummer David Prowse make them a more traditionally crowd-pleasing proposition (and as if you need more reasons to love ’em, one of the EPs they were giving away after the set features a cover of Mclusky’s immortal “To Hell With Good Intentions").



Of course, it wouldn’t be a Pop Montreal without some element of scramble and disarray — Montreal art-popsters Hot Springs decided to break up rather than open for the Black Kids, while a last-minute k-os booking meant the Toronto rapper performed his Saturday-night quick-hit DJ set to a half-full Portuguese Association. And inevitably, certain far-flung venues (and the hefty cab fare required to access them) discouraged attendees to take a chance on certain special events, like the Baltimore Round Robin face-off featuring Beach House and Jana Hunter, among others. But with few exceptions, bands mostly started their sets at the time listed in the festival program guide, a luxury not always experienced in previous years. The festival’s increased popularity may have forced an end to the word-of-mouth warehouse after-parties that defined the festival’s early days, but when you combine the improving organization with the quality curating, inimitable venue selections and notable lack of corporate music-industry presence, there’s still no mystery to Pop Montreal’s je ne sais quoi.