The undeniable joy of simple pleasures
Four hours of pop punk can begin to sound like the drone of heavily amped bagpipes as you hit the home stretch: each three-minute, three-chord burst of energy is followed by another. And then more of the same.
In a Bell Centre show headlined by hometown heroes Simple Plan, the three opening acts were received with way more than polite enthusiasm Thursday night. The go-for-broke approach of all three revealed only minor differences: All Time Low might have been cruder and sloppier, while Marianas Trench was clearly more polished, more theatrical and more musically accomplished. And in a blink-and-miss-it 20-minute set, These Kids Wear Crowns worked the crowd as hard as they could, handling themselves impressively in that most unforgiving first slot.
Simple Plan was better than all of them by a country mile, but even its ethos wasn’t a galaxy away from the support bands. For example, guitarist Jeff Stinco snuck tasty solos into Jump and Summer Paradise, but they were easy to miss and quite beside the point.
This was a marathon of pogoing, group members running and leaping in all directions, “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” singalongs, cellphones and glow sticks held aloft, more shout-outs to Montreal than you could count, fists pumping, hearts thumping, kids jumping, singers and guitarists venturing into the audience, piercing screams and all-around communal joy (except for the parents who were wishing their preteens weren’t getting assaulted by enough F-bombs from the stage to last them into next year).
One had only to watch the genuinely moving photo montage shown during This Song Saved My Life. In the pictures, grateful fans hold up messages testifying to what Simple Plan’s music had done for them. And you understand once more that this world of indestructible choruses and power chords exists completely outside the critical radar. Simple Plan consider themselves a people’s band – and their people don’t need any smartaleck music writers to tell them what they like, thank you very much.
So what could a rock critic do but surrender to the infectious Addicted, the guilty-pleasure cover medley of Moves Like Jagger, Dynamite and Sexy and I Know It, and the depressed but strangely life-affirming I’m Just a Kid?
“Bienvenue à la famille,” singer Pierre Bouvier said after singing The Worst Day Ever, in response to a show of hands from people attending their first Simple Plan concert. He later had the group’s photo taken from the back of the arena, with the 12,000-strong audience as their backdrop. A photo that will, one suspects, turn out much like the many cellphone shots being snapped all evening in the audience.
Which is kind of the point.