Andrew Willis

Montreal

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Montreal

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Words by Andrew Willis

Montréal feels like a city where the music is always louder than the money. There is something dirty, European, and beautifully unpolished about it — basement venues, cigarette smoke, battered leather jackets, cheap beer, flyers stapled to poles, bands playing too close to the crowd, and people who seem more interested in making something real than making something marketable. The punk energy is not just in the music; it is in the way the city resists being cleaned up too much. Montréal feels worn-in, political, sexual, artistic, noisy, imperfect, and alive. There is a kind of freedom in that roughness — a sense that you can look strange, sound strange, make ugly things beautiful, stay out too late, fall into somebody’s apartment after a show, and not have to explain yourself the next morning. It feels closer to Europe than North America in the best way: older, messier, less corporate, more romantic, and more willing to let culture happen in the cracks. Nothing works quite right, and somehow that is exactly where the life is.

Susanne Bartsch

Boom boom — Standard Hotel

Meat Packing District


June 25, 2026

Helmut Newton x Steven Klein: On The Dark Side

Staley-Wise Gallery

Soho


March 19, 2026

The Hives / The Chats

Live at the Brooklyn Paramount

Brooklyn


March 18, 2026

Chris Habana

Chinatown


March 15, 2026