POP Montreal headquarters photo by Rebecca Smeyne

All in all, the five-day music festival POP Montreal was a triumphant week, and one that got us asking a simple question: WHY IS POP MONTREAL SO MUCH FUN, WHILE OUR OWN CMJ IS MORE LIKE A PAINFUL, SWEATY RITE OF PASSAGE THAT WE KEEP ENDURING, DESPITE SWEARING NEVER AGAIN AFTER, FOR EXAMPLE, HAVING TO FIGHT A CIVIL WAR JUST TO SEE JAY REATARD, FOR CHRISSAKES?

It’s an unfair question in some ways—New York is huge, Montreal is not, so of course there’s not much point in lamenting CMJ’s lack of that tight-knit, friends-and-family feeling. Perhaps the better way to approach the issue is to figure out what POP does right, and what CMJ’s organizers could learn from their competition up north.

First and foremost, there’s POP’s simple/genius RSVP system, which lets press and festival pass holders pick the seven concerts for which they wanted guaranteed admission. (Nick Cave was the only show that was ineligible from the start for media-pass holders; you had to sell a kidney on Craigslist to score a balcony seat). With a bit of planning and foresite, this means that POPsters can bounce around from venue to venue without worrying about getting locked out of an anticipated show; anyone who’s tried to do the same at CMJ knows that it’s a futile affair. (Last year I was blocked from a show at Union Pool, of all places; evidently the organizers had decided to accept 3.9 CMJ passes at the door that year.)

Dark Meat photo by Rebecca Smeyne

Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to take a look back at POP Montreal—from multimedia orgies in porn palaces to Neil Young tributes and righteous post-punk from Guelph. If you missed it, here’s a cheat sheet to what went down in Arcade Fire's birthplace last weekend:

*Opening night was celebrated with French fries-and-gravy goodness; we argued over which member of San Fran psych-yawners, Vetiver, we’d like to fight, and then got blasted by a squall of keytar.

Vetiver photo by Rebecca Smeyne

*We ruminated on the perverse Montreal tradition of danse contact—Google that shit—and how it might relate to Leonard Cohen’s status as a playboy.

*Irma Thomas, the “Soul Queen of New Orleans” refused to take her shirt off; meanwhile, Lil’ Andy and Ideal Lovers barrelled through a Neil Young classic.

*Burt Bacharach’s Boring Parade of Greatest Hits ™ made us angry, despite being in a house of worship. Then we found Chad VanGaalen and our faith in the power of indie rock was restored, at least temporarily.

*Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy helped provide the live soundtrack to a gay porn classic. We blushed.

*The D’Urbervilles proved that Canada still has talent left to export; Adam & His Amethysts rocked a nice poncho, but not much else.

*Jack Dylan, POP poster artist and Man About Town, shared his thoughts on comics, Montreal make-out spots, and why Canadians could care less about their own political system.

We'll leave you with this portrait of New York's own Todd P scouting donuts at Tim Horton's, a Canadian favorite, also taken by the lovely Rebecca Smeyne. And Todd, if you're reading this: let's start thinking about a locals-only showcase for next year's POP. Brooklyn needs to represent.

I first met visual artist Jack Dylan at POP Montreal a few years ago. He was living with Graham van Pelt, the guitarist for Think About Life and the front man for a band-you-should-love-by-now, Miracle Fortress. At the time, they were both based in Friendship Cove, a massive, bi-level loft space that doubled as a weekend show venue. (They'd previously been evicted from a similar space dubbed The Electric Tractor.) Dylan has been handling poster duties for POP Montreal for the past four years, combining images plucked from superhero comics with portraits of Mile End's hipster royalty. (He's also responsible for some truly epic oil paintings, including one that showed a bereaved Al Gore cradling a dying panda bear.) I spoke with the artist about the newest round of posters for this years POP, which include inspirations from Edward Hopper, Woody Allen, and local Montreal make-out spots. -- Scott Indrisek

Yesterday was a slow day for musical discoveries, barring Guelph’s The D’Urbervilles, who played an invigorating afternoon set at Le Divan Orange. Unfortunately, Adam and His Amethysts were too dull to deserve such a sparkling moniker; what’s worse, their front man is also a member of Miracle Fortress, a band whose praises I would gladly bellow, loudly, from the very top of Mont Royal.

Based on how this year’s POP festival has run, you’d think we spend most of our time slouched in the cozy, questionably sanitary seats of an adult movie theater on St. Laurent. Last night, local musician Socalled gathered a rogue’s gallery of performers—including Owen Pallett, plus members of Belle Orchestre and HELITRONS—to perform the live soundtrack to the 1975 classic of explicit homosexual cinema, Cruisin’ 57. (Eager attendees lined up around the block for an impatient hour. Someone standing behind me: “Do you guys want to go home and rent a gay porn and put on Final Fantasy?”) A certified academic-type opening the proceedings, perhaps to situate the evening as a way of celebrating identity politics and sexual revolution instead of just artsy blowjobs on a big screen.

The historical introduction shed helpful light on the film’s genesis. It was, evidently, a parody of George Lucas’ American Graffiti. Director Toby Ross had an "ethnographic orientation" to his art, and preferred "non-professional actors with acne who’d blow their lines, along with other things." (No you didn’t, Professor Porn.)

Here’s a Zen koan for you: Would it be a Burt Bacharach concert if Burt Bacharach wasn’t there? In the case of this 80-year old living legend, overshadowed by studio musicians and back-up singers in the daunting environs of an ornate church, the answer is, sadly: yes.

Sure, Burt was physically present, playing the piano, and every now and then he’d stand up to deliver a gravelly-voiced homily on love. Yet his performance last night resembled nothing so much as a nicely choreographed performance by a tribute band that just happened to include the man being eulogized in song. Maybe it was the fact that the set was comprised of weird, A.D.D. medleys that sewed snippets of the hits together; maybe it was, as I heard someone remarking later, that Bacharach’s earnestness detonated the average hipster’s irony meter. Regardless, it was an odd and occasionally uncomfortable bummer. (Irma Thomas, on the other hand, would have owned every square meter of this house of worship. Oh well.)

What makes Montreal worth a long weekend—or a visa application, if a McCain/Palin nightmare comes true? Here're a few of our favorite things.

*Giant chess boards in Place Emilie-Gamelin. Sure, the park itself, a la Tompkins Square, is a squatter’s haven for squeegee punks and those that love them. But who can’t enjoy watching grown men locked in intense concentration while maneuvering a 2-foot tall plastic pawn?

*Casa del Popolo (or just “Casa,” pronounced without any sort of Spanish inflection, per the Anglophone hipster community.) Live shows and cheap food in the heart of the Mile End district. Think of it as Montreal’s answer to the indie rock meat market of Union Pool—just a bit mellowier, and a whole lot less desperate.

After one too many cocktails at an impromptu party across the street from the Ukrainian Federation, we managed to snag balcony seats to see Irma Thomas. The self-proclaimed “Queen of New Orleans Soul” looked decades younger than her 67 years, decked out in a sequined shirt, grey tights and heels. Her backing band warmed up the crowd with a few sing-along standards ("I've Got Sunshine on a Cloudy Day," "Superstition") before Thomas herself was escorted on stage. For someone who's donned the mantle of genuine royalty, she didn't take herself too seriously, warning that she was going to play newer material before she got to the vintage hits, and dropping a few discrete hints that the crowd should maybe, you know, buy my album. (That’s not to say the 21st century cuts aren’t well known—Thomas released After the Rain in 2006, which earned her a Grammy. One of the evening's finest songs, "Cold Rain," came from 2008's Simply Grand.). She noted the relative youth of the crowd and the fact that most of her hit songs were written before anyone in the audience was born: "Your parents brainwashed you well." When Thomas got a bit overheated under the stage lights, someone in the crowd suggested she take her shirt off. (Classy.) "I’m a married lady," she said. "And I don't take off my blouse everywhere."

Montreal is the spiritual—and occasionally, temporal—home of Leonard Cohen, recently inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. (He's also a man awesome enough to be entitled to say crazily pretentious things—like calling concert fans “angels born of the mud”—as he did during a foul-weathered performance in Glastonbury). Montreal landmarks, like Our Lady of the Harbour (pictured above), have crept into many of his lyrics, most notably “Suzanne.” Cohen's always been known to be somewhat of an accidental lady’s man—chicks dig that baritone croon and a guy who knows his way around a poetic couplet. He’s also no stranger to lewdness—it was reportedly Janis Joplin that was giving him head on an unmade bed in the Chelsea Hotel, which is something we do not want to think about—but it’s curious to wonder what Cohen would have to say about Montreal's reputation as a stomping ground for the hyperactive libido.

Did we forget to mention? This French-Canadian enclave is a pervert's paradise, thanks to certain lax laws that enable sleaze palaces to offer more than your average lap dance. Read this hilariously earnest explanation of the regulations, as well as why “sex is as much part of the Montreal culture as hockey and Celine Dion.” Meanwhile, we'll try to keep an eye out on St. Catherine street and report which pasty, shifty-eyed rock icons are hanging around in the early morning hours. (Nick Cave, we’re watching you.)

Last night's POP Montreal opening party kicked off in an appropriately contrarian locale: a cavernous poutain-and-pool dive downtown. Attendees scarfed freebie hot dogs and beer under the florescent lights, carb-loading for the inaugural night of live shows. (Proving that you can never really escape New York, Todd P was there. For the record: he did not appear to be eating from a styrofoam vat of gravy and french fries.) The official series of POP posters were hung from the rafters, designed—as in previous years—by illustrative genius and All Around Nice Guy, Jack Dylan, who we'll be checking in with later in the week. And like most sprawling music festivals, the biggest dilemma was figuring out the best way to wade through too many options.