M for Montreal's annual NXNE Bruise Cruise has become one of the festival's most popular events and it's easy to see why: you get to leave the city for a few hours of sunshine on Lake Ontario after several nights in dark, dingy clubs and you get hear some great music — they'll even throw in a frozen treat if you're nice. Kicking things off this year was Québec City's Ponctuation, who delivered a blistering set of psychedelic punk stompers played at breakneck speed.
Normally a duo of brothers, the addition of bassist Laurence Gauthier-Brown to Ponctuation's guitar-and-drums lineup turned the group into a formidable power trio, with Alex Beaulieu more than capably filling in for missing drummer Maxime Chiasson with some crisp, heavy beats. Wild-haired frontman Guillaume Chiasson showed off his arsenal of lustful Lux Interior-inspired vocals, Nuggets-worthy riffs and old-school guitar heroics on songs like opener "Poésie automatique" — complete with a guitar solo that recalled prime Amboy Dukes-era Ted Nugent — and the glammy "La réalité me suffit." By the end of Ponctuation's set, even those unfamiliar with the group's addictive garage rock were begging for more — and who could fault them?
Normally a duo of brothers, the addition of bassist Laurence Gauthier-Brown to Ponctuation's guitar-and-drums lineup turned the group into a formidable power trio, with Alex Beaulieu more than capably filling in for missing drummer Maxime Chiasson with some crisp, heavy beats. Wild-haired frontman Guillaume Chiasson showed off his arsenal of lustful Lux Interior-inspired vocals, Nuggets-worthy riffs and old-school guitar heroics on songs like opener "Poésie automatique" — complete with a guitar solo that recalled prime Amboy Dukes-era Ted Nugent — and the glammy "La réalité me suffit." By the end of Ponctuation's set, even those unfamiliar with the group's addictive garage rock were begging for more — and who could fault them?