Québec City garage-punk lifers The Carringtons return October 2 with The Reunion, a ten-song blast of sharp guitars, big melodies, and punk-rock economy twelve years after the band first got together. Somewhere between The Strokes’ melodic instincts, the full-throttle rush of Bad Nerves, Spiritual Cramp’s restless swagger, and the deceptive sophistication of The Hives, The Reunion sounds like four guys who have finally stopped trying to figure out what kind of band they are. The answer is pretty simple: big choruses, sharp hooks, and very little messing around. There is more going on underneath, though. Recorded and mixed by Adrian Popovich at Mountain City Studios in Montréal, The Reunion takes the band’s garage-punk foundation somewhere considerably bigger and more accessible. Synths and electronic textures creep around the edges. Guitars get doubled, bent and blown outward. Hooks that might once have disappeared beneath distortion are pushed right to the front. There are choruses here that could comfortably live on rock radio, but none of that comes at the expense of the band’s economy. Ten songs, almost no dead air, and the same instinct to get in, make an impression and get out.
That economy has become something of a philosophy for The Carringtons. Since regrouping with a tighter lineup and renewed purpose in 2023, Ben Fortier, Joey Savard, Alex Charron and Dave Chamberland have been releasing music prolifically, playing festivals and touring across Canada, while increasingly taking the band beyond its home turf. In 2026, that meant crossing the Atlantic for eight shows through France, Belgium and the UK. Their live sets can cram fifteen songs into half an hour. The Reunion moves with the same impatience. It’s the kind of record that makes you want to point an old Peugeot west out of Québec City, find the left lane and see how far you get before somebody tells you to slow down. There is some history underneath all that forward motion. Québec has been turning out beautifully unruly garage bands for decades, from Québec City’s cult ’90s troublemakers Les Secrétaires Volantes to The Spaceshits, Scat Rag Boosters, Les Sexareenos, CPC Gangbangs and Demon’s Claws. That raw, self-sufficient spirit is part of the landscape The Carringtons come from, but The Reunion reaches beyond garage orthodoxy. There is a melodic ambition here that owes just as much to the strain of Québec and Canadian alternative rock that figured out how to carry strange ideas, loud guitars and genuinely great pop songwriting into much bigger rooms. The Carringtons aren’t abandoning the basement. They’re figuring out what else they can build on top of it.
That evolution makes Popovich an ideal co-conspirator. A former member of cult Canadian garage-rock institution Tricky Woo and guitarist/vocalist in American Lips, he has spent decades on both sides of the glass, with recording and production work connected to artists including Sam Roberts, The Dears and Sebastien Grainger. His fingerprints are all over the way The Reunion refuses to confuse simplicity with limitation. Electronic instruments and unexpected textures slip into the band’s guitar-bass-drums attack, adding depth and impact without burying the hooks. Like The Hives at their smartest, The Carringtons understand that garage rock doesn’t have to sound like four microphones pointed at four amplifiers. Sometimes the extra noise is exactly what makes the simple part hit harder. Creative director Hugo Mudie, longtime frontman of The Sainte Catherines, also helped fine-tune arrangements and ideas, with Marc-André Beaudet mastering the finished record. Together, they helped sharpen a sound that sits somewhere between garage punk, indie rock and power pop, while giving the band’s increasingly mature songwriting room to show itself.
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