Also Cool's POP Montreal 2024 Top Picks (Nabihah Iqbal, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, knitting and more)

View fullsize

Amery via POP Montreal

The 23rd edition POP Montreal takes over the Plateau/Mile End this week from September 25th-29th. With over 200 artists performing across 20 venues, along with film screenings, a Kiki Ball, a panel symposium and more, the world-renowned music festival promises a five-day whirlwind of unforgettable programming. From living legends to POP first-timers, discover Also Cool’s must-see acts from this year’s lineup through our Top Picks selections below, along with our official POP Montreal playlist.

Pop star and illustrator extraordinaire Amery hits Casa del Popolo with her perfect soundworld, ready to hot wire the night. She began releasing music as Alpen Glow in 2020, after years playing in punk groups in Newfoundland and as half of Montreal pop duo Born At Midnite (Arbutus). Recorded in Montreal by David Carriere (TOPS, Marci), Patrick Holland and Kristian North, her debut album Continue As Amery is a blast of melodic joie de vivre. Sandford brings her punk and DIY credentials into sharp focus on 8 perfect pop odes to city living, making mistakes and figuring it out as you go along.

Amery plays Casa del Popolo on Wednesday, September 25th at 8:15pm.

Nap Eyes via POP Montreal

Nap Eyes have been on the AC playlist rotation since our high school era, with their 2015 album Whine of the Mystic serving as a soundtrack to our senior year. The Nova Scotian icons make crooked, literate guitar-pop, perfect for nostalgic self-reflection. Nap Eyes songs resonate because they manage to balance the cryptic and the quotidian delicately, rendering a compellingly honest equivocation without evasiveness, a relatable ambivalence without apathy. As a result, both lyrically and musically, their music articulates the urgency of youthful grace. It’s the sound of being young and alive in the city, a tenuous and impermanent counterpoise of recklessness and anxiety, archness and earnestness.

Nap Eyes play La Sotterenea on Thursday, September 26th at 7:30pm. 

View fullsize

Beverly Glenn-Copeland by Brianna Roye

New-age vanguard and living legend Beverly Glenn-Copeland returns to Montreal with his first collection of new music in nearly two decades. With his recently released full-length The Ones Ahead, the Canada-based, Philadelphia-born singer-songwriter and composer rediscovers his breakout 1986 album Keyboard Fantasies. Having just celebrated its one-year anniversary, The Ones Ahead is Glenn Copeland’s captivating piano ballad opus. Now in his late 70s, The Ones Ahead is a prolific testimonial to the artist being told that he “would not be successful until [he] was very old” by his mother at a young age. 

Beverly Glenn Copeland plays Théâtre Rialto on Thursday, September 26th at 7:45pm. 

View fullsize

Los Bitchos via POP Montreal

Los Bitchos is back, better than ever, and ready to get you dancing. Since the launch of their much-loved debut album, Let the Festivities Begin, with City Slang in February 2022, the London-based, pan-continental women instrumental four-piece (featuring Western Australian-born Serra Petale, Uruguayan Agustina Ruiz, Swede Josefine Jonsson, and South London-born Nic Crawshaw) has captivated audiences worldwide. If you’re into 70s-80s-inspired cumbia, you’ll love this dynamic girl group.

Los Bitchos play MDP sur De Gaspé on Friday, September 27th at 7:00pm.

View fullsize

Freak Heat Waves via POP Montreal

Weirdo sonic collagists Freak Heat Waves take the stage with their delightfully uncategorizable Mondo Tempo for an anticipated live performance alongside Montreal expat Homeshake. Hailing from Victoria, British Columbia, the pair’s refined collaboration is palpable on their ambitious 5th release. Dusky, burned-out and deliciously groovy from top to bottom, Mondo Tempo effortlessly glides between steamy disco and hits of dub on Freak Heat Waves’ astral FM dial. 

Freak Heat Waves play Théâtre Fairmont on Friday, September 27th at 8:00pm. 

View fullsize

YHWH Nailgun via POP Montreal

YHWH Nailgun translate a primitive raw spirit into a modern form. The New York-based quartet hit hard and fast, and have been making the rounds at festivals like SXSW all year long.

YHWH Nailgun plays La Sotterenea on Friday September 27th at 8:30pm.

View fullsize

Sydanie via POP Montreal

Toronto-born hip-hop savant Sydanie made an everlasting impression on Also Cool since she graced the stage at the 2021 summer edition of Debaser’s Pique festival in Ottawa. With her unapologetic flow and electric dexterity, the Jamaican-Trinidadian rapper delivers gripping verses within her inventive spin on hazy trap meets grime meets electronica. With a long-anticipated LP Electric Circus in the works for 2025, we’re itching to catch this masterly emcee take the stage before its release.

Sydanie plays Piccolo Rialto on Friday, September 27th at 11:00pm.

View fullsize

Alix Fernz via Pop Montreal

Get your liptstick out for punk scene sweetheart Alix Fernz, taking over La Sala Rossa alongside Edith Nylon and our darkwave crush Laura Krieg. Singing about bar life, psychosocial disorders, drug addiction and fear, while drawing inspiration from high heels, lipstick, transvestism, fashion and weirdos, the singer-songwriter lays out along masqued syllabic beats the accounts of a coming-of-age in an era wherein likes and memes are all the rage.

Alix Fernz plays La Sala Rossa on Saturday September 28th at 8:00pm.

View fullsize

knitting via POP Montreal

Hot off the press is knitting’s debut full-length Some Kind Of Heaven, produced by Scott Monro of Preoccupations. Released earlier this month on Canadian west coast label Mint Records, Some Kind Of Heaven is the Montreal band's best (yet). Some Kind Of Heaven serves up fizzy-yet-tense alt-rock with an uncompromising spirit, both wrestling and embracing the familiar woes and self-discoveries of the 20-somethings years. Needless to say, the group’s delightful pairing of self-deprecation and crescendoing, grungy instrumentals have us hooked. 

knitting plays L’Hemisphère Gauche on Saturday, September 28th at 8:00pm.  

View fullsize

Nabihah Iqbal via POP Montreal

Musician, writer and beloved NTS radio broadcaster Nabihah Iqbal travels all the way from London, England to share her celestial fusion of shoegaze and cold wave. Her sophomore LP DREAMER was one of Also Cool’s top albums of 2023 for “[traversing] spacey dream sequences with 80s synth pop sensibility,” with Iqbal’s ethereal vocals embroidered throughout. Iqbal will follow her live set with a DJ performance to close out the night. 

Nabihah Iqbal plays The Rialto Hall on Saturday, September 28th at 10:00pm, followed by a DJ set at Piccolo Rialto at 11:30pm.

POP Montreal

Website | Instagram

---

Related Articles

Alpen Glow's Latest Single "Boring Potion" Serves Up Disco-Pop Candor

“Boring Potion” single art by Amery Sandford

It’s an ongoing joke here at Also Cool HQ that we are all deathly terrified of being perceived. We are, of course, never alone – no matter your creative discipline, it’s a common predicament to be stuck in the fear, annoyance, or outright disinterest that comes with establishing yourself and your artistic outputs as a Brand ™. Enter Alpen Glow with “Boring Potion”, a sparkling disco number that wraps these grievances in a hyper-saturated sheen.

Alpen Glow is the loner pop project of Montreal-based visual artist and musician Amery Sandford (also of BBQT and Born at Midnite). Her work as Alpen Glow is characterized by an interest in the constructed persona and escapism into digital realities, as reflected on releases like debut EP Amertape 2020. Sandford’s music balances refreshing sincerity with an appreciation for the transcendent qualities of a good pop hook. A winning recipe!

Amery Sandford of Alpen Glow. Photo courtesy of Tess Roby

“Boring Potion” unites listeners with its bright keys and light-hearted rumination. The track’s musings implore us all to explore our varyingly-tormented relationships with press cycles and story shares. On the makings of the track, Sandford explains:

“I made this song last winter when we had curfew at 8 pm every night in Montreal. These depressing circumstances manifested in me a very intense figure skating addiction, and everyday I would go to the park by my house and twirl around to F.R. David's Words album. It totally inspired this disco track that I made to let out some frustrations about feeling obligated to constantly self promote online.”

Complementing the release of “Boring Potion” is a charming visualizer video, also concocted by Sandford. Viewers take a trip inside the unofficial Alpen Glow bar, a 80s-tinged fever dream of dancing chalices and wildlife portraiture. Between this space and the Amerbar depicted in “Saturday Nite”, we propose a bar crawl. Drinks on us.

Watch the “Boring Potion” visualiser below!

Alpen Glow

Instagram | Bandcamp | YouTube

Spotify | Apple Music | Website

Rebecca Judd is the features editor of Also Cool Mag.

---

Related Articles

Born at Midnite Shares New Single and Video for Spirited Pop-Banger "Pop Charts"

Born at Midnite, Amery Sandford (left) and David Carrier (right), photo courtesy of Arbutus Records

Montreal’s faux-vanity duo Born at Midnite, composed of Amery Sandford (Alpen Glow, BBQT) and David Carriere (TOPS, DVC Refreshments), made a splash back in 2020 with their bouncy & beachy self-titled debut. Today, the pop aficionados share “Pop Charts,” the first earworm off their new 7” of the same title, out on Arbutus Records July 23rd, 2021.

“Pop Charts” plays off of the band’s signature “unsponsored product-placement-punk” sound and method. Atop 80s-clad samples, synths and sparkling guitar, the self-described pseudo-anthem bemoans artificiality in the entertainment industry with a tactful self-awareness; completed by Sandford’s campy vocal performance and a saxophone solo from special guest Mitch Davis. Born at Midnite says the track “was written cynically after hate-bingeing the Netflix tour-de-faux Westside, a show that parades a handful of insecure influencers who are tasked to create a hardship themed musical in an LA nightclub.”

To complete their commentary, the pair premieres an equally hilarious music video alongside the single, directed by Raphaël Sandler, with animations by Sandford. In the video, Carriere plays Sandford’s manager, and sells her out by replacing her with an AI robotic-pop star called Amerbot. After Amerbot soars to the top of the interplanetary charts, the real Amery confronts her sleazy manager and combats Amerbot in a legendary showdown in the name of artistic integrity.

Watch Born at Midnite’s video for “Pop Charts” below

Born at Midnite

Instagram | Bandcamp | Spotify

Zoë Argiropulos-Hunter (she/her) is the co-founder and managing editor of Also Cool Mag. Aside from the mag, she is a music promoter & booker, and a radio host & DJ.

---

Related Articles