BLOODGROUP, REYKJAVIK, ICELAND

Jamie Thompson :: special to popmontreal.com

It is the “Pop” Montreal festival, right? At the end of the day we’re trying to bring music that people will enjoy as pop music. One of the hallmarks of the festival is that we generally are also trying to broaden people’s conception of what constitutes pop music. With slogans like “weird is the new indie” and Rai bands and noise bands and New Orleans trans bounce and the newest genre that hasn’t even found a stable name yet, it can sometimes leave you saying: “What about a bunch of statuesque Nordic-types doing electro-pop that sounds like it could be on the charts (in Europe)? Is there no room for the more traditional “pop” sound at POP Montreal?”

Well ask no more, because here’s Bloodgroup. These Icelandic critical darlings make a kind of electronic pop that subverts basically none of your expectations, redefines no genre category and pushes very few envelopes, and yet it is really good pop music. It sounds like a mix of some of your favourite not-so-guilty pleasures from the '80s into a dark, melodic, danceable little package that is probably closer to what you imagine when you think “pop music” than most of the stuff that will end up at the festival.

So there, we’re not snobs.

Jamie Thompson has has been a friend of the festival since 2002 and plays in some of your favourite bands. Follow him @svengully and #popsesh on Twitter. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Pop Montreal.