Monday Night Meltdown

The Grace

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Dork Magazine x Footsteps x M for Montreal x Mothland bring the heat

There are countless theories about spontaneous combustion and, as a child, I was deeply invested in every single one. Scientifically speaking, it’s what happens when heat can’t escape anymore; pressure builds, matter ruptures, something ignites. Oily rags. Friction. Damp organic material packed too tightly together. A room with no ventilation and too many bodies moving at once.

Sounds a bit like any gig worth its salt, really.

Monday night at The Grace had all the right conditions. M for Montreal x Footsteps x Mothland x Dork Magazine — essentially the cultural equivalent of throwing aerosol cans into a microwave — somehow still had enough fuel left after The Great Escape for one last detonation.

And ignite they absolutely did.

Mothland once again left the back door open for us and we slunk our way inside just as Boutique Feelings had started spilling onto the stage. A six-piece from Montreal crammed onto a platform built for maybe four people maximum, already threatening structural integrity before the first chorus properly landed.

We’d caught them the day before at The Old Blue Last, so we knew broadly what was coming. That still didn’t prepare us.

Karim Lakhdar moves with the same twitchy conviction as a young Zack de la Rocha — all kinetic urgency and barely-contained fury — but without feeling derivative for a second. Between cuts like ‘Long Sure’ and ‘If You Were Me’, the band swing violently between wiry post-punk, freeform jazz eruptions and politically-charged art rock. Before the second track properly kicks in, Lakhdar deadpans: “We don’t think it’s normal to scroll past a kitten, a war and a plate of pasta in less than a minute,” which earns the kind of uncomfortable laugh that only lands because everyone knows he’s right.

Lines like, “It’s when they start to take it all that you begin to fucking care,” hit especially hard against the backdrop of the current global mess. You don’t really watch Boutique Feelings so much as get swept into their frequency whether you intended to or not.

Flautist Vanessa Ascher, shoulder-to-shoulder with Lakhdar throughout, weaponises her instrument entirely. At points it sounds less like a flute and more like suppressive fire aimed directly at the patriarchy.

Then, suddenly, it’s over. The set closes with a surprisingly gentle, “Come chat with us by the merch table,” as though the previous forty minutes hadn’t felt like being trapped inside a politically conscious pressure cooker. We lean against the wall trying to catch our breath.

Needing a moment to cool off, we find a nook near the decks where a familiar face is soundtracking the downtime with Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’. Track after track, banger after banger, the room somehow keeps moving between sets instead of collapsing in on itself.

Only later, while scrolling through tagged photos after the gig, do we realise the DJ was none other than Nuha Ruby Ra, who we’d caught tearing apart The MOTH not too long ago. Had we clocked it at the time we probably would’ve gone completely tongue-tied, but instead she was warm, approachable and effortlessly cool in the way genuinely talented people often are. Given the moves she’s making over the next few months, it’s safe to say she’s one to keep both eyes on.

Then came Annie-Claude Deschênes.

Helping launch Quebec Spring’s M for Montreal clearly wasn’t enough excitement for one lifetime because she emerged onto stage like Leatherface armed not with a chainsaw but a microphone, immediately holding the entire room hostage. Backed by Boutique Feelings drummer Anthony Piazza — operating a cycloptic wrist-mounted spotlight camera that projected warped live footage behind them like some cursed voyeuristic surveillance reel — the whole set felt genuinely nightmarish in the best possible way.

Tracks like ‘Menace Minimale’ and ‘Les Manières De Table’ slithered around the venue with this grotesque electro-punk swagger; all chrome, sweat and predatory tension. It dripped from the ceiling like condensation in a slaughterhouse.

Another absurdly strong set.

Later in the evening we caught Annie outside the venue and, much like earlier encounters throughout the night, she was disarmingly easy to talk to. In the space of five minutes we somehow ended up discussing everything from being managed by Desire, to getting approached by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for touring — influences you can absolutely trace through both her sound and stage presence. We passed along a cryptic message to a mutual acquaintance back in Montreal, both immediately cackling like cartoon villains before disappearing back into the night.

Tiny world.

Time folds strangely at gigs like this, but somewhere in the blur we spot the long, slender silhouette of Ellis-D standing beneath the glow of a running-man exit sign. We gush a bit about the set we’d caught at 100 Club and the mythical aura surrounding it. Demure as ever, he brushes it off with a shy, “Oh gosh, that feels so long ago.”

Naturally, all that humility evaporates the second he hits the stage.

Ellis-D spends most of the set climbing over PAs, launching himself into the crowd and generally treating personal safety as an optional extra. By the time closer ‘Drifter’ stretches into its sprawling finale, the room feels one bassline away from total collapse.

And then Lemonsuckr arrive to finish the job.

A completely new band to us, though judging by the amount of merch already in the crowd, absolutely not to anyone else there.

Dressed like sleazy sixth-formers from some lost 1982 public access broadcast — leather jackets, shirts, ties, already drenched in sweat before the first song properly lands — they treat the stage less like a performance space and more like a vague suggestion. Cables whip through the audience. Microphones migrate into impossible places. People get tangled together like human extension leads.

It’s total chaos.

An intensely British, deeply unwell version of Kraftwerk.

By the time they tear through ‘Dead Disco’, ‘Instant Kinks’, ‘H.E.A.T.’ and new single ‘Stain’, it feels like they’ve absorbed residual energy from every set before them and completely overloaded. There’s something impossible to pin down about Lemonsuckr; grimy but magnetic, detached but euphoric, like finding a rave flyer in a puddle and deciding to follow it anyway.

After the set we end up outside with the Mothland crew and the band themselves, attempting to convince them that Montreal needs to import whatever the hell this is immediately. Negotiations continue over post-loadout kebabs before the reality of it being a Monday night finally catches up with everyone.

Somehow, after an entire festival weekend, every band still turned up ready to empty the tank completely. By the end of the night, The Grace didn’t feel like a venue anymore so much as the smouldering remains of a very controlled accident.

Days later, the smoke still hasn’t cleared but we’re happy to report that we’ve not gone up in flame, yet.

M for Montreal

The Old Blue Last

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

QUÉBEC SPRING BLOWS THE ROOF (AND THE PLUMBING) OFF THE OLD BLUE LAST

Ballsy and Alix Fernz ignite M for Montreal’s 20th with soaked ceilings, soaked riffs and soaked shoes
 

It’s bucketing down in Shoreditch and the roof at the Old Blue Last is leaking like it’s on strike, but that’s hardly enough to drown out the buzz as M for Montreal hits town. Celebrating 20 years of building transatlantic bridges between Québec’s artful misfits and the UK’s music heads, the Canadian crew are throwing a party worthy of their rep, and yeah, the bar’s open and the pizza’s free. Good luck topping that, Camden.

First up, it’s Ballsy, and she’s not easing anyone in. Launching her set like a confetti cannon at a kindergarten rave, she’s all heart, hooks and heavy pop glow, the kind that makes you feel like you’re twelve again at your rich mate’s birthday bash. Except this time, the sugar’s swapped for wine and the cake’s a fridge full of free booze.

Her blend of dream-pop and indie grit, fresh off debut EP Bisou, has all the fizz of someone who’s not here to “warm up” the room; she is the room. “We just wanna have a fun time and party with you tonight,” she says, all swagger and sincerity. At one point, there’s talk of death by electrocution, “If I die tonight, someone clear my search history,” she quips, eyeing the water leaking from every crevice. It’s Montreal-in-May levels of damp, but Ballsy’s defiance is electric enough to dry socks.

There’s no drummer, but who cares? The beats are tight, the vibes are looser, and by the time she hollers, “Let’s get fucking weird on this one,” we’re already there. Closing with a shout-out that lands like a manifesto — “Fuck transphobia, fuck genocide, and fuck Donald Trump”, it’s clear: Ballsy isn’t just a party starter, she’s throwing Molotovs at the status quo and handing out glitter for the fallout.

Next up, Alix Fernz, in his UK debut, steps up like he’s been playing these shores forever. No filler, no chat, just a relentless, propulsive stream of fuzzed-out post-punk and lo-fi synthwave nightmares. If Ballsy lit the match, Alix is the firestorm after. It’s all in French, a bold choice that feels like a flex, and it works, tapping into that Molchat Doma-style otherness that makes lyrics feel secondary to vibe.

Imagine early-2000s French indie dragged through a dystopian wormhole and spat out in a leather jacket. There’s a gritty, magnetic stage presence that feels part Iggy Pop, part space crash survivor. At times, the band sounds like they’re playing inside a collapsing satellite, all chaotic drum assaults, upstroked bass lines like twitchy nerves, and synths that glue the madness together.

And yeah, that sound? It is like love songs interpreted by wild animals. There’s something rabid and romantic in the way the disjointed rhythms and maniacal vocals spiral together – and it turns out, they may owe part of the process to mushrooms. Alix is the rare kind of performer you can’t look away from, not because he’s begging for your attention but because you’re afraid you’ll miss something important if you blink.

It’s keenly, violently interesting. A showcase that proves “performance art” and “punk” don’t have to sit at opposite ends of the room, they can pull the pin, then calmly finish the verse.

As the night ends, the crowd spills out into the soaking London streets with cheap pizza slices and a buzz you can’t fake. M for Montreal’s London takeover is more than a showcase, it’s a reminder that the next wave of musical greatness doesn’t always come from LA lofts or East London basements. Sometimes it’s born in snowy provinces and explodes outwards, loud, weird and proud.

If this is your intro to the Québec Spring scene, consider it your call to action. Fernz plays The Lexington on Friday. Ballsy’s still gigging across the UK. The rest of the M for Montreal crew, from Geneviève Racette’s haunting folk to the post-genre chaos of Patche and Truck Violence, are dotted around the country like sonic landmines. Step on one. Trust me.