This year’s edition felt especially ambitious, both in scope and spirit, and RANGE was on the ground to take it all in. We spent the weekend weaving between packed and sweaty venues, bouncing from one band to another. Every set left its mark, but these five in particular are the ones we’ll still be carrying with us when winter finally breaks.

Lysandre @ Aux 33 Tours

Live music, when done right, can turn any space into sacred ground. Lysandre’s simple yet enthralling set at Aux 33 Tours on Day 1 of Taverne Tour proved exactly that.

After lending her keys and vocals to artists like Klô Pelgag, Choses Sauvages, Lou-Adriane Cassidy, and Ariane Roy, she stepped back into the spotlight for the first time since 2023 with a listening party and short set celebrating her new release, Portrait de L’Invisible. I arrived early to find the alley already buzzing — friends, family, fans clutching flowers and gifts. It felt less like a showcase and more like a gathering.

Before the music began, Lysandre wandered the aisles, greeting loved ones. At one point, her father — glowing with pride — asked me to help him grab a flyer off the wall. From the outset, it felt like being welcomed into her world.

Then she sang. Her gossamer yet distinctive voice filled the room, her lyrics drifting between poetry and confession. Faces in the crowd softened into something like wonder. I was so intent on getting closer that I accidentally broke a table in the process — but that’s a story for another time.

Protomartyr @ Le Belmont

The first time I heard Protomartyr, I was in my Grade 10 bedroom, tuned to CHOM 97.7 — one of Montreal’s last great FM holdouts. “Pontiac 87” came on, and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. I rushed to download The Agent Intellect onto my iPod Nano and lived inside that album for weeks, obsessed with its elegance and severity.

A decade later, at Le Belmont, the band performed The Agent Intellect in full for its 10th anniversary. The feeling came rushing back — only this time it was communal. The opening chords detonated across the room, and soon the entire crowd was shouting along to Joe Casey’s incantation: “Before recorded time / In some suburban room see / The Devil in his youth.”

When the record first came out, those lyrics felt cathartic. Hearing them now, in a world that has since grown stranger and more volatile, they felt exorcising. The release wasn’t solitary anymore. It was shared — loud, defiant, necessary.

— Read our interview with Protomartyr — 

Julie Doiron @ Chez Baptiste

Chez Baptiste is typically a happy-hour haunt — Pogos, lager, easy conversation. I’ve spent plenty of unremarkable evenings there. I never expected it to become the site of something quietly life-altering.

On Day 2, Julie Doiron delivered a stripped-down set to a sold-out room, transforming the pub entirely. On a makeshift stage near the bathroom, she paced nervously, turning to her partner — both in life and music — Dany Placard for reassurance. The pre-show playlist (Hall & Oates, Tears for Fears) cut abruptly. Silence fell.

She stepped to the mic and sang, a cappella: “Sure is nice to see you / You look good these days.” Her voice — raw, gentle, steady — carried effortlessly across the bar, reaching even those who couldn’t see her. The room felt suspended.

The set was loose and unstructured; she credited Placard with assembling a “master setlist” but welcomed requests. “Heavy Snow” and “Spill Your Lungs” floated up from the crowd. Between songs, she spoke candidly — about her hair, about love, about the small mechanics of a shared life. The banter between her and Placard was tender and unforced. They traded glances and chord changes like private jokes.

It felt less like a performance and more like witnessing a conversation — intimate, musical, and profoundly human.

Annie-Claude Deschênes @ Le Ministère 

Saturday night at the RANGE Magazine showcase, Annie-Claude Deschênes turned Le Ministère into a dark-wave bacchanal. Her set blurred the lines between concert and art performance, indulgent and immersive from the outset.

At one point, she seated a couple from the audience at a candlelit table on stage, serving them over-iced desserts while singing about table manners over pulsing synths — a surreal Valentine’s fantasy rendered in neon. Her charisma was electric; every gesture sent the room into rapture.

As the set unfolded, the atmosphere grew deliciously heavy. I oscillated between feeling detached from my body and hyper-aware of it. Platters of cookies and jellied desserts circulated through the crowd. Deschênes eventually descended into the audience for a cover of Lizzie Mercier-Descloux’s “Fire,” the room moving as one ecstatic mass.

The finale saw a third of the audience dancing onstage beside her. It was decadent, absurd, joyful — and a perfect embodiment of what Taverne Tour does best: collapsing the space between artist and audience until community becomes inevitable.

Kap Bambino @ Le Ministère

Following Deschênes would intimidate most performers. Kap Bambino did not flinch.

Frontwoman Caroline Martial delivered a feral, galvanizing electroclash performance — thrashing, sprinting, leaping as if possessed. The synths were jagged and relentless, forming a wall of sound that obliterated self-consciousness. The crowd moved as a single inflamed organism, feeding off her volatility.

It felt purgative. By the time the set ended — my final show of the festival — I was exhausted and electrified in equal measure. When I think back on trudging through Montreal’s snowbanks that weekend, it’s this performance I’ll remember most vividly — a final blast of heat to carry me through the rest of winter.