The band’s raucous FME set at Cabaret de la Dernière Chance the night before served as a kind of live debut for their forthcoming full-length Odditi Populaire—the four-year follow-up to their 2021 self-released tape street cleaning machines of the world, a chaotic collection of experimental synth-punk. “When I listen to street cleaning machines, it feels very nascent, like a little baby bird,” Woodhead says, scratching his wild curls. So by that account, Odditi Populaire should be considered a phoenix rising? “More like an ostrich trying to flap its wings,” he laughs.

The new album’s title comes from Crasher’s now-defunct jam space in Montreal, where they wrote and recorded between 2021 and early 2025. “So we would record a jam and it would always save the recording as Audi Populaire, cause there was an Audi dealership right next door,” Kelly says. “We changed it to fit the more artsy vibe of the space.”

Once a packaging factory, Odditi Populaire became a laboratory for Crasher’s experiments and collaborations. There, a newer song like “Stories” began as a Latin-inspired beat before morphing into a freaky synth-punk nightmare. The track features the screaming vocals of Dusty Lee (of Toronto’s dungeon synth punks Slash/Need), colliding with Woodhead’s agitated delivery. “Not to be too existential about it, but recording music is sometimes like capturing lightning in a bottle, and that was one of those moments,” Woodhead says. “This album is kind of a documentation of all the times we had in that space.”

Within the lyrics of songs like “Staring Into The Static I Saw The Shape Of You” and the looping, stabby synthwork of “Dead System Man,” a theme of decay hums through Odditi Populaire—the decay of relationships, and of Crasher’s creative space itself. Like many great jam spaces before it, Odditi Populaire was demolished for condos. “I can quote Sean Nicholas Savage [a Canadian madcap singer-songwriter] here,” Woodhead says. “He said, ‘The real invisible performance is the slow disintegration of [his] voice and the songs in [his] life.’ So if we think about decay, maybe it’s the same thing?”

That theme bleeds into Crasher’s live show too. While the stage isn’t dressed up, Woodhead wears a beige jumpsuit (think Ghostbusters) and silver lipstick, while Kelly and Thorpe stick to black. The aesthetic is theatrical and glammy—but subtly so. It’s muted glam, nestled in the home of soft decay. Pair that with Woodhead’s visual lyrics—evoking “an airport with no windows” or “purple skies and gaseous iridescence”—and Crasher’s set often feels more like performance art than a concert. “I love that it can be thought of as a play, ’cause at one point it was going to be a play. Like in a swamp,” Woodhead says.

“Like a bog opera,” Kelly adds.

“Yeah, we could do a full like Queen thing,” Woodhead says. “We’ll save that for the next album.”