Population II
Maintenant Jamais
Bonsound [2025]
“The latest album from Montreal’s Population II is their most progressive (and best) yet!”
Album Overview: Population II appeared on most listeners’ radar when they released their debut album, À La Ô Terre (To The Earth), on John Dwyer’s Castle Face label in 2020. That album offered a distinctly French-Canadian take on modern psych rock, and it was followed up in late 2023 by their excellent sophomore LP, Électrons Libres du Québec (Free Electrons of Quebec), which cranked up the energy while demonstrating more sophisticated songwriting. Now they’re back with their third full-length, Maintenant Jamais (Now Never), which manages to retain the strongest elements of their sound while exploring some new directions.
Musical Style: Still grounded in the spacey psychedelia of their first two albums, Maintenant Jamais adds aspects of progressive rock and electronic. The band’s three-piece lineup is deceptively simple (Pierre-Luc Gratton on drums and vocals, Tristan Lacombe on guitar, Sébastien Provençal on bass, with the latter two sharing keyboard duties), but manages to create a dynamic sound that ranges from meditative atmospheres to funky grooves to abrasive intensity, often within the same song.
Evolution of Sound: With each subsequent album, Population II seem to pull off the difficult trick of refining what they do best while simultaneously incorporating new ideas. Each album shares the Population II genes but expresses that musical DNA in different ways.
Artists with Similar Fire: The way the band combines the complexity of prog with a more streamlined instrumental approach calls to mind a specific subset of mid-70s albums from established acts that were attempting to push their sounds in new directions. King Crimson’s Red, Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Yes’s Relayer, and Pink Floyd’s Animals all inform the sonic blueprint of Maintenant Jamais with their combination of harsher textures and contemplative melancholy. It’s not all darkness and gloom, though, and some of the album’s more uplifting moments work-in modern psych influences such as King Gizzard and Tame Impala.
Pivotal Tracks: The opening not-quite-title track, “Maintenant et Jamais,” explodes out of the gate with abstract guitar riffs that would fit equally comfortably in the mid-70s or early 80s King Crimson incarnations. “Prévisions” keeps the prog leanings going with some moody guitar and bass interplay before launching into an acid psych guitar solo. Tracks like “Haut-fond” and “Poudreuse Blues” offer moments of quiet respite between the more propulsive tracks, like the funky krautrock rhythms of instrumental “i + i” of the jazz-influenced changes of “Le Thé est Prêt.”
Lyrical Strength: My French is too rusty to offer any sort of serious analysis of the lyrics, but when the music (including the vocal melodies) is this good it tends to transcend language barriers with ease.
Final Groove: With their strongest and most diverse set of songs yet, Population II show why they should be mentioned in the same breath as acts like Osees, Slift, King Gizzard, and Ty Segall. If you haven’t checked them out yet, better late than never —and Maintenant Jamais is a perfect jumping-on point.
POPULATION II REVIEW HISTORY
Électrons libres du québec (2023) / À la Ô Terre (2020)
POPULATION II LINKS
Instagram | Facebook | Bandcamp | Bonsound
- Population II: Maintenant Jamais [Album Review] - April 1, 2025
- Neal Francis: Return To Zero [Album Review] - March 20, 2025
- The Moles: Composition Book [Album Review] - February 25, 2025