Lagwagon brought the Hang tour to their adopted home town (review & photos)

All photos courtesy of Jason Hughes (http://jasonhughesphoto.com/) & Vitor Munhoz ((http://www.vitormunhoz.com/).

Lagwagon have a very special relationship with Montreal. The California punk band have been coming up here regularly for a full two decades now, and generally draw bigger crowds here than they do almost anywhere else in the world. The band is so enamoured with Montreal that frontman Joey Cape even wrote a song about his love for the city on his 2011 solo album. That connection between Lagwagon and their Montreal fans is definitely reciprocal, with last week’s Olympia show being a prime example of the passion Montreal fans have for the band.

Long-standing Bay Area punks Swingin’ Utters were a perfect addition to the show, and ran through as much material as they could in their relatively short opening set.  This was definitely the most energized the band has been in years, with frontman  Johnny “Peebucks” Bonnel pacing frantically across the stage like a young Ian MacKaye, punching the air for emphasis and gesticulating like a madman. The band touched on all eras of their working-class, street punk catalogue in their 40-minute set with a remarkable intensity for a band that’s been around for nearly 30 years.

The last couple of times Lagwagon played Montreal their sets consisted mostly of material from their first four LP’s, a greatest-hits type set that made for a great show, albeit one heavy on nostalgia. This time around, with the release of their latest LP Hang still fresh in everyone’s minds, the band made a point of demonstrating that they are not content to simply bust out the oldies one more time. They played a whopping 7 tracks from the new record, which might have been a deal-breaker in another city, but here in their adopted hometown the new material was received just as strongly as anything off of Hoss or Trashed. There were some notable omissions (no “Sleep” or “Stoking the Neighbors,”) but the back and forth energy between the band and the drunken throngs of 30-somethings in the crowd made for yet another memorable Lagwagon Montreal show.

For such a massive night, we have photos of each band’s set from both Jason Hughes and Vitor Munhoz (click to enlarge the photos in the galleries). Let us know what you thought of the show in the comments below!

Lagwagon (Photos by Jason Hughes)

Swingin’ Utters (Photos by Vitor Munhoz)

This Legend (Photos by Jason Hughes)