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Time flies. The 23rd edition of POP Montreal, taking place Sept. 25 to 29, includes 20th-anniversary tributes to three iconic local bands that have each marked the city’s music history in their own way. 

Indie-rock acts the Dears and Stars perform a double-bill tribute to their respective albums No Cities Left (2003) and Set Yourself on Fire (2004), Saturday, Sept. 28 at 8 p.m. at the Rialto Theatre; while rambunctious multi-culti rap collective Nomadic Massive celebrates its 20-year career with a block party Thursday at 5 p.m. at Marché des Possibles. 

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For POP Montreal creative director and co-founder Dan Seligman, the shows are a way of coming full circle for the festival, which has grown up alongside these and other long-running hometown groups. 

“It’s kind of cool — we were around when these bands first started out and they’re still making music,” he said. “I don’t think we began as a festival of nostalgia, but we’ve been part of this indie underground scene and part of that has always been about looking to the past.” 

Seligman name-checked some of the legendary international artists who have performed at POP Montreal over the years, including Patti Smith, Burt Bacharach, Irma Thomas, Mavis Staples and Will Oldham. 

“These are artists that have really made an important impact on popular music,” he said. “It’s cool to see these artists from Montreal who when we were starting out were friends or my family (Seligman’s brother Chris is a member of Stars); now they’re part of that dialogue around bands who are seen as part of the history and are these legends of the indie scene in Canada.” 

Another local hero doing something different at this year’s festival is singer-songwriter Patrick Watson, who revives his Sacred Sundays show with a performance Sunday, Sept. 29 at 11:30 a.m. at Marché des Possibles. Co-presented by the David Suzuki Foundation, which will give a presentation at 10 a.m., the event is free for families and includes workshops on wildlife and flora of the area, pennant painting, soapstone carving with Inuit artists and a reading by children’s book author Melissa Mollen-Dupuis. 

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Notably absent from this year’s POP Montreal lineup is Arcade Fire, which just performed its own 20-year anniversary concert for its classic 2004 album Funeral at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. The band has played concerts in South America and Europe in recent months, but none in Canada. Arcade Fire has not performed on home turf since it played to a less-than-full Bell Centre following the sexual misconduct allegations against lead singer Win Butler published by Pitchfork in 2022. 

“Yeah, they seem to have been avoiding Montreal,” Seligman noted, adding that although he wishes the band well in resolving “whatever ethical problems” it may have so it can “make great music and be inspired,” POP Montreal did not reach out to Arcade Fire about performing at this year’s festival. 

“No, that feels like a whole other beast,” Seligman said. “We don’t want to go there.” 

It can be daunting to find one’s way through the POP Montreal lineup, which features 170 acts performing at close to 20 venues big and small, scattered around Mile End and the Plateau. 

In order to save time in responding to all the people who ask him what they should see, Seligman compiled his annual list of “Dan’s picks,” which he emailed to friends and family. It wasn’t hard to put together for a guy who, 23 years in, remains a music fan at heart. 

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“There’s so much good stuff,” he said. “It’s one of the great things about programming the festival. You get to listen to a lot of new up-and-coming musicians. You get to discover so many new bands.” 

His hot tips include singer-songwriter Iris DeMent, who plays Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Rialto Theatre. “She’s one of those under-the-radar but super iconic folk-country legends from the States,” Seligman said. 

He also names Philadelphia-born, Canada-based trans singer-songwriter Beverly Glenn-Copeland (Thursday at 8 p.m., Rialto Theatre), who became one of the first Black students at McGill University in the early ‘60s, wrote for Sesame Street and spent 25 years among the cast of Mr. Dressup, releasing a few albums along the way, before experiencing a resurgence in the past decade. 

“It’s such an incredible story, of this self-produced, forward-thinking avant-garde jazz artist doing new-agey music in the 1970s and ‘80s, then disappearing from music before being rediscovered, touring the world and having a second career,” Seligman said. 

The artist Seligman worked hardest to get is New Orleans producer, DJ and rapper Mannie Fresh, who plays a late show Friday at 11 p.m. at the Piccolo Rialto, preceded by pioneering L.A. DJ-producer-vocalist Egyptian Lover. 

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Seligman saw Fresh performing for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts series with rapper Juvenile last year and was blown away. 

“I said ‘F—, this guy is the best ever, I have to book him,’” he recounted. “He was DJing, rapping and singing. I knew of him, but I did a deep dive into his career. He’s a huge producer and hitmaker, multiplatinum, Grammy nominated. It was definitely challenging (to line up), finding the right person to talk to and convincing him to come to this indie festival in Montreal.” 

Among the local acts on Seligman’s list are jazz-folk singer Sarah Rossy (Thursday, 8 p.m., L’Hémisphère Gauche); Colombian-Québécois singer-songwriter Lapelúda (Friday, 8 p.m., La Sala Rossa); Thus Owls singer Erika Angell (Friday, 8:30 p.m., La Sotterenea); rapper Fraud Perry (Thursday, 8:15 p.m., Casa del Popolo); and Ribbon Skirt, which Seligman calls “one of my favourite new Montreal bands,” featuring Anishinaabe singer Tashiina Buswa (Saturday, 8 p.m., La Sotterenea). 

One of the highlights of this year’s festival is La Route Chante: Hommage à Lhasa (Sept. 29 and 30, 8 p.m., Rialto Theatre), a tribute to mesmerizing Montreal singer-songwriter Lhasa de Sela, who died in 2010. It includes performances by Feist, Calexico, Juana Molina, Silvana Estrada, Klô Pelgag, La Force, Helena Deland and the Barr Brothers. 

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As usual, POP Montreal’s many offshoots bring the festival beyond the concert stage. Film POP includes profiles of Toronto electro-rap artist Peaches and reggae legend Sister Nancy, as well as the documentary La Cancha, about the vibrant community around a neighbourhood basketball court in Little Italy. 

Art POP features three exhibitions of works by local artists, Monday to Saturday at 5689 St-Laurent Blvd., and Sept. 26 to 29 and Oct. 3 to 6 at La Vitrine Céline Bureau, in the alley between Waverly and St-Urbain Sts., south of Bernard St. 

Puces POP, the popular handmade arts and crafts market, runs Sept. 27 to 29 at Église St-Denis. And new addition Comedy POP boasts a roster of emerging standup acts, Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. at Ursa. 

Taking stock of his festival’s ever-varied panoply of offerings, Seligman was pleased. 

“I think we’ve tried to stay true to the original mission, which was to create an indie festival for the local scene and not cater to the industry,” he said, “to stay grassroots, stay irreverent and not take ourselves too seriously.” 

AT A GLANCE

POP Montreal runs Sept. 25 to 29. For tickets and more information, visit popmontreal.com.

tdunlevy@postmedia.com

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