What’s a poor Montrealer do when a festival pitched as “the last wave of summer” is beset upon by storm clouds? Dance yourself dry of course! As this festival patron entered the soggy Parc Jean Drapeau grounds, I encountered a crowd undeterred by the rain and ready to rock with one of the fall’s most enticing festival lineups.

I started out by checking out Pelada, an unmissable Montreal mainstay who are set to disband later this year. The duo’s set was a delightful mixture of hardcore punk vocals and even harder techno. Singer Chris Vargas was in complete control, inviting the audience to come closer as she barked screeds against police brutality and imperialism to an increasingly enraptured crowd. Towards the end of the set, after playfully acknowledging that a lot of people in the crowd “don’t know who the fuck we are” Vargas acknowledged that this was the last Pelada show that many audience members would ever see. If so, they made it count. 

While the majority of festival goers took in the sounds of New York’s latest king of sleaze The Dare, I slipped over to the Jardin stage to check out Nick Léon who cut a comparably unassuming figure at the decks, sporting a baggy hoodie and a ubiquitous cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Despite appearances, Léon’s set was bursting with exuberance, a guided tour through the kaleidoscopic sounds of the modern Miami underground. Miami has a reputation for diverse styles and Léon’s sound was no different; speaker-rattling bass brushed up against skittering dembow and reggaeton rhythms. At one point, Léon even chopped up Mr. Worldwide himself, mixing Pitbull’s immortal “I Know You Want Me I (Calle Ocho)” into a deliciously fun techno banger. Léon’s set reached its apex with song-of-the-summer contender “Bikini,” the gorgeous collaboration with Erika de Casier he dropped earlier this year. Were some of the song’s breezy vibes dampened by the squall? You couldn’t tell by watching the dancefloor. 

Next, I hustled over to the main stage to check out Yves Tumor, who seems to fashion themself as a modern twist on an old-school rock star. There were none of the artist’s arty ambient-infused tracks to be found here. Instead, Tumor and company won over the audience with pure brute force. On his biggest songs, “Jackie,” “Gospel for a New Century” and “Meteora Blues,” Tumor’s band sounded and looked absolutely huge, with big power chords and bigger hair.

Hustling back to the Jardin stage, I managed to catch the end of LSDXOXO, whose delirious Lady Gaga and Vengaboys(!) edits kept the crowd’s blood pumping as the rain reached its apex. LSD remained onstage for a B2B set with rising British artist Shygirl, whose Club Shy EP brought classic house sounds into the Hyperpop era earlier this year. The icy Club Shy tracks hit extra hard in the deluge with bangers like “4eva” whipping the crowd into a frenzy. All the while, Shygirl herself held court in a pair of dark sunglasses, commanding the crowd to go even harder.

Then the rain stopped, and out stepped Jai Paul. I’ll be honest, I’ve been waiting to see the reclusive experimental R&B auteur for over a decade, and I got the sense that many of the crowd felt the same as he strolled onto stage to the rumbling bass of his Big Boi collaboration “Higher Res.” From there, it was a tour of Jai Paul’s greatest hits, from his sultry cover of Jennifer Paige’s “Crush” to the stuttering Dillaisms of “100,000.” Interestingly for a man whose lone unfinished “album” (if you can call it that) was seemingly cobbled together out of snippets of guitar and Harry Potter samples, Paul enlisted the help of a full backing band for his set. At their best, the band gave the audience a look at how these songs might have evolved had Paul been able to polish them. “Zion Wolf Theme” took on a slight reggae lilt while “All Night” assumed its final form as a classic R&B slow jam. Midway through “Str8 Outta Mumbai,” the set’s closer, Paul cut off the band and savored the moment. “This is my last show for a while,” he announced, taking in the crowd. Then he cued the band up, restarted “Str8 Outta Mumbai” and sent us out of the rain happy.

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