Les Habitantes
The Sainte Catherines
Dancing For Decadence
(Fat Wreck)
Montreal has been in the spotlight too long to still be the latest hotspot, though it sure gave the indie world a brilliant run. Tottering out at the end of the bar is The Sainte Catherines, who’ll have none of that arty pandering. Three chords and a leather jacket will do, merci beaucoup.
The band’s third album has a dozen, but plays out as a one-track mind: Blow Montreal — maybe all of Canada — to bits and start it over. A fury of downstroked power chords light fires under ideas so plentiful they can’t help but be contradictory (“Confession Of A Revolutionary Bourgeois Part III,” “Get Your Politics Out Of My Hair”), Dancing For Decadence doesn’t know whether commence destruction or count itself among the damned. Vocalist Hugo Mudie barks like an asphalt-eating field commander, and by the time he himself is slain, he’s ready to be reincarnated: “I want to wake up and be another man.”
— Steve Forstneger
Appearing: April 22nd at Logan Sq. Auditorium in Chicago.
