Montreal-based indie rock project Hey Gorgeous is led by Peet Massé, a multidisciplinary artist who spent the last three years simultaneously releasing singles and completing a master’s degree in the arts. The debut album International Breakthroughs arrives June 22nd, and “Rocker on a Club Run,” out now, is its designated party song – though that description undersells what’s actually happening in the track. Massé describes it as an attempt to find a convergence point between two worlds he perceives as culturally opposed: alt-rock and house music. The music video literalizes that premise, following a fictional version of him through a restless 24-hour binge across Montreal’s bars, nightclubs, and art galleries – shot at actual Montreal landmarks including La Casa Del Popolo, Le Système, and the CDEx gallery at l’UQÀM – in search of the moment where those two scenes stop being separate things. It’s a genuinely interesting question to build a song around, and the production commits to it fully.
Production-wise, this song is an unbelievable collage of styles – it’s like EDM, punk, trip-hop, and arena rock all at the same time. It’s very hectic, and the momentum of the rhythm section is palpable throughout. The digital and analog elements don’t take turns so much as collide, which is exactly the point; the friction between them is where the song lives. What keeps it from flying apart is the underlying drive – there’s a relentless forward motion that holds the whole chaotic thing together, pulling you through the genre whiplash rather than leaving you stranded in it.
Massé calls finding that convergence point “serious business,” and the production backs that up. “Rocker on a Club Run” isn’t content to gesture at the rock-meets-club concept from a safe distance – it actually sounds like both things happening at once, which is considerably harder to pull off than it sounds. International Breakthroughs is shaping up to be one of the more genuinely adventurous debut albums coming out of the Canadian indie scene this summer.
