Music

Montreal's Solids filter hardcore and Cancon through pop

by Nicole Villeneuve

Late last October, on the packed, big back patio of a Gainesville, FL, Mexican restaurant (partly owned by ex-Against Me! Drummer Warren Oakes, natch), a duo from Montreal played a blistering set that betrayed not only their makeup, but their relative obscurity and only single-EP discography.

“Oh, yeah, that was a good one,” singer/guitarist Xavier Germain-Poitras agrees over the phone while we both lament missing the upcoming 12^th year of the official punk summer camp weekend, The Fest, in Gainesville this year. But for Solids, the priority was keeping the year clear to finish their debut album, Blame Confusion. Recorded in Montreal’s Mile End by Adrian Popovich (We Are Wolves, Sam Roberts, The Dears) at Mountain City Studio, the two-years-in-the-making album it’s a hazy, aggressively addictive punk offering reminiscent of recent fare from Japandroids or Toronto favourites METZ.

“We come from a pretty hardcore background. When we first started Solids, the main goal was to write pop songs but to keep that urgency and that aggression,” says Germain-Poitras. While the influence of ‘90s alternative has overwhelmingly found its way into a renaissance of guitar bands like Wavves, Cloud Nothings, No Age, et al. over the past few years, Solids retain a decidedly pop lean reminiscent of the candied bits that a band like Wales’ Joanna Gruesome are also currently pushing. To the patriotic ear, you’ll also hear threads of classic Canadian hook machines such as the Killjoys and fellow Montrealers the Doughboys.

With the confluence of music culture and Montreal’s everlasting moment, I suggest that Solids, a lean duo (rounded out by drummer Louis Guillemette) with easy appeal, could soon find that their standout Florida set is the new standard for the band.

“We never really thought about it when we started,” says Germain-Poitras. “We wanted to play basements and weird spots and not proper venues. We ended up getting a good reception, so we ended up playing on lineups with more pop-oriented [acts]. But we just do our thing, and we don’t really question it.”

“I really think that this kind of music is getting a good reception because it’s something people were more used to at a certain point in their life and they’re just excited about it,” he continues. “Or, through the current crop, they discover older bands. I can’t say we’re not influenced by bands from the ‘90s, but I hope we’re not just doing a nostalgia kind of thing. I think we fit within the music scene of now (laughs).”