Friday on My Mind is a highly subjective, curated rundown of five of the cooler things happening in Montreal during the weekend.
Poolgirl
Saturday at La Sala Rossa
Feminist punk rock is alive and well in Montreal.
The funny thing is if you’re not in the scene, you might well not realize that there is a thriving underground punk community in Montreal and one of the latest products of that milieu is Poolgirl. The members of the five-piece band — four women and one man — aren’t wild about being pigeonholed, but if you insist, they’re happy to call themselves a riot grrrl band, referring to the movement that started in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. in the heyday of the grunge wave in the early 1990s. It’s all about female-led punk with a strong political edge.
Given the feminist politics of the genre, it’s not the least surprising that Poolgirl are part of a show at the way-alternative festival Suoni Per Il Popolo called Smash the Patriarchy. The bill also includes four-piece “witch ‘n roll” band Rough Spells, swing bluegrass project Margaret Tracteur et les Faucheuses fauchées, and maximalist dreamy-noise artist Bianca Supercell.
Poolgirl members (clockwise from top left) Manya Ziemiecki, Gwenna Pirozzi, Rachel Bradbury and Randy Powell-New. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
I recently met with the four women from Poolgirl — the sole male member, guitarist Simon Leclair, wasn’t available that day — and all four are recent graduates of McGill University, three from the university’s music department. They’re all between 22 and 25 years old. Karina Mariano, 51, is the organizer of the Smash the Patriarchy show, and she also took part in the conversation on the terrasse of the Suoni Per Il Popolo office just above the venue Casa del Popolo.
Mariano got into the riot grrrl scene three decades before the musicians in Poolgirl.
Mariano and the band were talking about seeing American post-punk band L7 opening for Amyl and the Sniffers recently at Place Bell in Laval and how inspiring it was to see the all-female band who have been around since the late ’80s.
“In the ’90s the raw energy of seeing women rocking out and not caring, looking different, looking raw, and to be angry and to have fun at the same time, I hadn’t seen that in a long time and I saw that at the L7 show,” said Mariano. “It made me really proud. That’s why I wanted to start Smash the Patriarchy, because I feel it’s coming back.”
“I feel we need it and I really think there’s a resurgence of riot grrrl in Montreal,” said Poolgirl lead singer Randy Powell-New. “I see a new band every few months at this point. I think there was an assumption for so long that these issues were no longer issues and that we had somehow won. But I think that’s really clear now that that’s not the case. The moment you think these rights are won, that’s when they start to be pulled back.”
Mariano said she’s happy to see the younger generation taking over the movement.
Poolgirl — who recently released the mini-album Still Not Getting What I Want — play music that’s kind of classic buzz-saw metallic punk (though with some strong pop hooks) and it couldn’t be further from what three of them studied in McGill’s music department. Gwenna Pirozzi, the bassist, just finished her master’s at McGill, where she specialized in flute, and is applying to do a PhD. Rachel Bradbury, the drummer, studied percussion at McGill. Manya Ziemiecki, the rhythm guitarist, studied classical opera vocals at McGill.
They’re all happy to be playing music that’s light-years removed from what they studied. Bradbury said it’s been liberating.
“Coming directly from music school, I thought this music would be unserious and easy, but then I grew to find it was a nice outlet,” said Bradbury.
At first the three music-school grads used to have really serious debates about the songs and then Powell-New — who studied psychology, not music, at McGill — would break in and tell them: “Guys, it doesn’t matter!”
Tickets: suoniperilpopolo.org
Québec Redneck Bluegrass Project
Friday at MTelus
The Québec Redneck Bluegrass Project will be launching its latest album, Qu’acoustis-je Qu’ouïs-je Qu’entends-je, at Les Francos festival Friday. The members of the band are originally from Saguenay, but they were all traipsing around the world a couple of decades back and the band actually formed in Kunming in China. And they play bluegrass and folk with a punk spirit. Yeah, you can’t make this stuff up. It’s folky but festive.
Tickets: francosmontreal.com
Lou Laurence is the creator of the comedy Existential Lingerie, which is playing the 2026 Fringe Festival. Courtesy of the Fringe Festival
Existential Lingerie
Friday at Petit Campus
Montreal singer and playwright Lou Laurence is back with her latest production, a musical comedy about an existential crisis provoked by … ill-fitting underwear. Part of the Montreal Fringe Festival.
Tickets: montrealfringe.ca
National Indigenous Peoples Day
Sunday at Cabot Square
There will be several artists performing between 3 and 7 p.m. at this free event, including The Hello Crows, Linda Saddleback and Willie Thrasher, Leonard Sumner, Kris Kinokewin, Manitou Singers and Sinquah Family Hoop Dancers.
Information: popmontreal.com
Titanique is playing at Espace St-Denis. Courtesy of Bombardier Communications
Titanique
Friday and Saturday at Espace St-Denis
This is the French Québécois adaptation of the hit American jukebox musical of the same name, which has already been staged in English at the Segal Centre, and like the Segal Centre version, it stars popular Quebec impressionist Véronique Claveau. She plays Céline Dion in this spoof of the movie Titanic and though it’s in French, it features all the big English-language Dion hits.
Tickets: titanique.ca