The Best Way to Spend a Weekend Sitting on a Living Room Floor: a Review of mai/son's Expo88

After being in Montreal for almost 2 years, I was confident that I had experienced every Montreal venue worth experiencing. From grand theatres with horrible air circulation to gravel pits under graffiti-ridden bridges, if music could be played there I assumed I had had their stamp on my wrist at some point. Though, as I stand here in a living room on Saint Urbain, beer and earplugs in hand (both cost $5), I realize that was stupid. From the outside, mai/son is your average Mile End townhouse. Inside, however, it’s a haven for art of all kinds, a bootleg student-run gallery, and the most well-run house gig you'll find anywhere in the city, all smooshed into a charming 7½. With a seemingly ceaseless blizzard bustling outside, mai/son packed itself full of Mile End nerds this past weekend for what proved to be an unmissable display of everything the neighbourhood has to offer, as well as some truly fantastic sweaters. 

Starting off the first night, which I can’t imagine is easy on the nerves, was singer/songwriter Peter Lannon. Lannon’s music reminds me of what my sister would play for me on a road trip; something I am content with floating along to, folky, but leaning towards a poppier sound than some. Armed with only a guitar and notebook paper, Lannon’s down-to-earth set worked perfectly to ease into the concept of mai/son as a venue, and if you’ve ever sat on a living room floor and listened to some guy play guitar, I’m sure you’d agree. Thursday night continued to herald this cozy intimacy with Brad Barr, one-quarter of Montreal Indie-folk mainstays The Barr Brothers, and I feel pretty secure in saying that this set changed my life. With near inhuman pedal precision, Barr spent the better part of an hour unravelling every expectation I hold for a folk show, literally tearing apart his guitar in the process. Barr’s music removes me from any feeling of time and space, placing me instead in a nostalgia-fired vortex of warm, echoing distortion. Very rarely am I so drawn to a set that I take no notes on it, but by the end of Barr’s performance all I had written down was “I need to call my Dad”. After taking a moment to recuperate, grab another beer, and draw a vaguely recognizable Garfield in mai/son’s art room, I returned to the living room’s double-door guarded entrance for the final set of the night. In a flurry of knitted sweaters, pornstaches and synth lines, the four-piece indie up-and-comers Hank’s Dream took to the stage, backed by a thunderous round of applause. Hank’s Dream pumps charming psychedelia into the sounds they create, laying a cloud of haze over crowds akin to a sonic shroom comedown. Very rarely do I hear bright sparkling synth lines and say “man, this could use some steel lap guitar”; in the case of Hank’s Dream, it works beautifully, merging some Lenderman-ish twang with their vibrant indie rock sound. While I was fully aware of my presence in that snowed-in Mile End living room, I could have just as easily been on the backroad hippy town beaches I grew up on, transported there solely by smooth, rolling basslines and sun-baked nostalgia. As the show came to a close, and I trekked through the swampy marshes of the boot room back onto snow-caked Rue St-Joseph, I felt invigorated; not only to thrift more wool sweaters and learn the steel guitar, but to come back the next night to see all mai/son had in store. 

Sadly, Friday was not the transportive experience Thursday had been, at least not for me. With all credit to the 55 Bus, I showed up an hour late and smelling like soup. Because of this mishap, I was unable to catch the debut performance from local reverb-wielders Amaryllis and heard only one gut-wrenching track from Sunray Minor. I still urge you to check out all they have to offer as musicians, which is what I plan to do after I’ve finished cursing out the STM.  it all works out in the end though, as the band I did manage to catch seemed to have more than enough energy for three performances. The Fake Friends are a five-piece post-punk direct-to-ear delivery system, one of those grab-you-by-the-collar and throw-you-at-the-wall type outfits. Blasting through borderline dance music intended to blow your head clean off, The Fake Friends represent a niche corner of music that remains criminally untapped: what if James Murphy’s side gig was working a deli counter in Snowdon? Their sound is an explosion of influences from all across the board, like an energetic, synth-powered sonic moshpit. After watching lead vocalist Matthew Savage basically peel himself off the living room floor, I left mai/son feeling infinitely sweatier than I had Thursday. Whether this is a good thing is still up for debate. 

As enjoyable as Thursday and Friday were, Saturday night at Mai/son takes the cake, at least in my opinion. For the third night in a row, I danced around the sludge-filled entryway and into the 7½’s cozy living room. Though attendance was high the entire weekend, the room was packed full on Saturday, with toque-toting, fleece-wearing hipsters. Opening the night was shoegaze band Fleeting Colours, a perfect local warmup for the Slowdive concert later that week. Fleeting Colours delivers everything one might want from a shoegaze show: drowning, distorted guitars, aching vocals, and minimal eye contact. I’ve long said that the best openers are the ones I can stand and sip a beer to while dramatically nodding my head, and Fleeting Colours delivers exactly that. Brightening up the room immediately after were scene newcomers Hearts of Palm, who seem to have this magical ability to make any listener kick and jump and fling themselves around in a joyous, manic frenzy (listen to “Dummer” and tell me this doesn't happen to you). There is a magnetic charm to Hearts of Palm’s music, luring even the most timid onlookers into their wonderful little post-punk world. We love you, Hearts of Palm! By the end, I had had  40 straight minutes of spilling beer and dancing like an idiot and was in need of a break. Thankfully, frown line were eager not to let this happen! Hailing from, surprise surprise, Montreal, frown line have seen wild success in the past 2 years, reaching widespread critical and public acclaim. Regardless of this, the best place to see them play is still a living room. frown line’s soft, fleeting sound feels like a gentle hurt, like a hug from someone who’s forgotten about you. Like the gently falling snow visible through the window behind them, frown line covered the room in a layer of tangible joy, nostalgic warmth beaming out from every guitar line. While I think every band displayed at mai/son was wonderful, I genuinely could not think of a better way to end this kind of festival than a frown line set.  

 As the last line of “What’s Leftover” rang out, and the sea of knit toques filed back out into the blustery Montreal night, I took a second to consider what I appreciate not just about mai/son, but about Montreal in general. A small, intimate festival put on by a group of friends to showcase music they like is a truly beautiful thing, and I think it's representative of the Montreal scene as a whole; a collection of wonderful individuals who just want to get together and show each other the art that they love. While this would all exist without Expo88, and other festivals like it, they serve as consistent reminders for how lucky we are to live in such a cool place, and with such cool people. I am happy to say I walked out of mai/son with a warm heart and very wet socks, and I will be thinking about my experience here for much longer than it takes for those suckers to dry. 

Sam Kitch is the magazine editor at CJLO 1690AM. He is also the host of I Think You Might Like This, a hip-hop show airing Tuesdays at 2:00 PM.