Wake up! the singer cried. And everywhere, they did.
And yea, the indie-rock missionaries did set forth from Montréal* in their rust-bucket tour vans to spread the din of salvation and sin. What else would you expect from a city laid out under a glowing 100-foot crucifix? We’ll get there. We’ll get to The Cross—but first let’s go to the masses.
Two years ago, the pop machine had everything it needed, really: massively videogenic stars, jingle-ready hits and a global idol jukebox to feed the message to its audience. All it lacked was a message. Just as we often use words to avoid communicating, pop had become a medium to avoid feeling.
Enter a crew of bed-headed songwriters with nothing in common save a postal code and a sensibility—jacked into the Sweet Emotion, the mainline of melancholic joy. Montréal’s breakthrough bands of 2005 did not share a style. They shared an attitude, a zeitgeist. And they expressed it in the sound of the feeling of being young and messily, elementally alive. Or simply being, really. They sent an Aurora Borealis of passion streaking across the radar screens of the world.
So, what happened? How did Montréal go from “It’s, like, European, right?” to pop’s anointed “it” town? Something old, something new. 
Take this idiot’s guide to local history: ze Paris of ze Nouveau Monde, fine dining, hockey, troubadours, world-class crooked politicians, daring bank robbers, cheap rents, mad poets, effortless sensuality. Hot summers, colder winters (before global warming screwed with that). You get the picture. An ancient port island-city, Montréal has always been a great importer of talent: its liberal orbit pulls in artists and exiles from more conservative cities and scenes. Think of it as Brooklyn on an Earthling budget, a progressive enclave where ideas and iconoclasm could germinate in peace. And now it exports.
The new thing? Kids. An entire mini-generation grew up believing any city (buh-bye, Seattle) could run the flag up and declare itself the world capital of rock’n’roll. But this place doesn’t know from opportunism or formula. There’s no Montréal sound, man. In their lo-fi loft-parties, these kids brewed up a musical motley in splendid isolation for almost a decade until the talent reached critical mass, when someone touched a match to the gasoline. And started an Arcade Fire.
SPIN and The New York Times heard those first half-dozen bands and declared Montréal was The Sh#*. They heard sonic diversity and melodies and fearless invention with a swooning emotionalism at its core. They knew The Stills, Rufus Wainwright, Sam Roberts, Wolf Parade and Priestess wouldn’t fit any orthodox category, and that it mattered not. If ‘05 was the year the hipnoscenti put Montréal on their iPods, ‘07 is when the message hits the masses at a little ‘ol Texas festival called SXSW (South By Southwest for the uninformed).
Montréal is bipolar: a French city whose English-speaking bands were the first to splash across the pages of magazines in New York, L.A., London and Tokyo. But those Anglo bands grew up steeped in the love-over-gold mindset of their Franco brothers, and came home to inspire the French bands with tales of global possibility.   So now it’s Murray Lightburn of the Dears wailing, “You can try to break my heart” from David Letterman’s stage and breaking through to jaded New Yorkers. It’s the dream-hardened pop of the Besnard Lakes or the hymnal Patrick Watson, who channels the beatnik angels. There is Malajube, high-stepping, irresistible and French, with an omnivorous avant-bubblegum mélange ready to take over ze world. The High Dials and its psyche-pop for right-now have already made a true believer of Little Steven Van Zandt, who championed the group on his syndicated radio show.
In urban personality, Montréal is a mistress in a world of soccer moms. The band Pony Up! has that unstudied sexiness and innate flirtatiousness in its sensual jangle. So do bands as diverse as Call Me Poupee, with its unashamed Barbarella tease, and Lesbians on Ecstasy with its electro-trash.
Still, we wouldn’t want you to come away believing everything is arty-tortured or pillow-talky. Bionic and Priestess deliver the face-planting riffs of modern hard rock, while CPC Gangbangs toss Big Ugly ragebombs of noise. You wouldn’t want to meet any of them in a darkened bedroom.
And since this is the place where the Raelians launched their cloning revolution, there is always a healthy dose of freak: from AIDS Wolf’s angular experiments and We Are Wolves’ dance-noise to the monstro-rock of GrimSkunk.
With thousands of Myspace hits (that’s the virtual meeting spot for Gen Y) proving pop has no language barrier, the Franco bands are stepping up as never before. You’ve got Karkwa, who put noir heart into prog-rock. There are garage wig-outs from Le Nombre and Les Breastfeeders, and a band called Les Georges Leningrad taking punk where it was going before the jocks stole it from Poly Styrene. And given the city’s dance DNA, we feature the crazed creativity of turntablist Kid Koala, smearing all 64 Crayolas across the wheels of steel, and the bossa nova-breakbeats and scary strings of Amon Tobin.
In truth, Canada is echoing with talent from ocean to ocean, with vibrant scenes in Toronto, ON, Vancouver, BC, Halifax, NS, Winnipeg, MB, Calgary, AB and Edmonton, AB. But 2007 is a Montréal moment, and the class of ’07 offers a musical anatomy lesson in the heart, the gut and the region just below that.
Back to that glowing Cross. It’s real, the city’s defining landmark, a 102-foot tall monument atop Mount Royal blazing with fibre-optic lights. A French explorer put the first one up there 364 years ago (minus the fibre-optics) in answer to a vow, in recognition of answered prayers. And the disciples are still testifying from its foothills.
*Montréal, QC