Late March is always a time for Montreal to shrug off the last of its winter blues, but this is always signaled by the odd day or two of freakishly cold weather…winter’s final death rattle.  So it was in a cumbersome winter jacket, layered with a sweater and t-shirt for good measure that I bustled my way down into the hot, crowded depths of Les Saints on March 30th to catch Friendly Fires playing their first show in Montreal.

Oh Murder by Death, I don’t get to see you that often but when I do it’s just like coming home (or it would be if my father was a bootlegger during prohibition and my mother worked at a bordello…which is decidedly NOT the case… but you catch my meaning.) A good friend of mine once described the band as incredibly competent musicians who are obsessively engrossed in a very specific genre fiction (in this case the classic western but if John Wayne fought zombies instead of stereotyped Native Americans.) While I completely

This was the third time The Presets hit Montreal, after two albums and two previous shows it was nice to see how many people were lined up for the show. When I go to a concert, the first thing I always take note of is the crowd. Though it may sound strange it really does help you figure out what to expect for the rest of the night.  Everyone is there for the same reason; to see a band they like perform live.  For the Presets and The Golden Filter, the crowd was a mesh made up of all types of people.

I can easily say that this was by far the best concert I have been to in quite some time. The show was an overall hit. Though the crowd was fairly small, more people showed up than I expected. I really was convinced it was going to be a dead night due to the fact that Black Kids where playing with Mates of State that very same night. In the end it looks like I made the right choice by going to Late of the Pier and The Whip instead.