Magazine

Tuesday July 28 was a pretty dark and rainy evening, but that’s not what the crowd at La Sala Rosa noticed during the KT Laine / boyhood / Eliza Niemi performances that night. As the audience grew throughout the night, it felt like a microcosm of the Plateau culture – with a mix of people in their 20s to 30s in classic Montreal styles. Before anyone took to the stage, it already had the intimacy of a university dorm show.

Neon, black and snapbacks colored the crowd around the booth this Friday night for the TECHG1RLS set at Bar le Ritz PDB. With support from whyhaze and beamskii, the Miami-based DJ duo of Paris and Rosey brought high energy, and despite playing to a relatively small crowd they made it an iconic night – bringing a set that felt like the afters you never want to leave.

Forty people, maybe fifty, is not really enough people to blend in. That was the first thing I noticed on Saturday at Bar Le Ritz PDB, where Charlie Chimi was opening for L'Eclair and everyone was standing a bit too far apart. The mugginess of the wet summer day was undoubtedly a contributing element in this.

The rain trickled its steady stream in one of the most classic, heat-breaking Montreal summer storms outside of the Sala Rossa concert hall this Thursday night, where Fireball Kid, Frownline and Knitting took the stage to celebrate Knitting’s release of their latest album, Souvenir. It takes a pretty phenomenal bill to pack the ballroom of the Sala Rossa, but I can say with full certainty that this bill was one of them. Equal parts millennials, sporting shag cuts and tote bags, along with cotton candy-colour-haired Gen Zs with wired earbuds made up the crowd. The commonality was our tepid slightly-dampness which brought our spirits together for the show we were about to see.