The stage was square, with VIP sections on two opposite sides and the crowd packed in front, and the curtains were drawn all the way around it. 2120 stood behind them in their suits and could not see a thing. They could hear plenty. “They were loud,” the band says of its first full house in Paris. “Some people chanting ‘2120’, we couldn’t believe it. Cyril and Nicolas the managers of the venue looked at us astonished and asked us how we managed to bring so many people. We danced to Stevie’s ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’ awaiting the signal to play, already lit up by the biggest smile you’ve ever seen us wear.”
That night is a large part of why the trio now lives in Paris. Brothers Maxime Blackburn (bass and keyboards) and Gabriel Blackburn (guitar) started the band in Sherbrooke in 2015, built its name in Montreal with singer Billy St-Onge, and in spring 2024 booked themselves a six-date French tour with no real audience waiting for them. Paris turned up anyway. They went back that autumn for sold-out shows, signed with French Parade, recorded a second album at the city’s Studio Alphaville and moved there at the start of 2026. Powdery Notes came out on 9 October. In May the three made their first television appearance on France 2’s Taratata 100% Live, playing All The Words, covering Hall & Oates’ Rich Girl and joining Gaëtan Roussel of Louise Attaque on Jean-Patrick Capdevielle’s Quand t’es dans le désert. On 18 November they are back in Montreal for M for Montreal at Casa del Popolo, the first of three Quebec dates.
The name is an address, 2120 South Michigan Avenue, home of Chess Records in Chicago and the title of a Rolling Stones instrumental from 1964. The band kept only the number, and says the choice is about lineage rather than branding. “2120 South Michigan Avenue was the address of the Chess Records studio in Chicago, where great blues music was recorded by the likes of Muddy Waters and Little Walter, and also some of our favourite Chicago soul artists like Etta James and Curtis Mayfield. The name expresses our love and admiration for the Greats that came before us, and this tradition of music making that puts the heart and soul at its core.”
The Blackburns had been playing together since they were kids. What they lacked, in a town where the only people willing to get on a stage and sing were girls, was a singer who would hang around afterwards. St-Onge arrived with no experience and a bigger range than anyone expected. “Billy impressed us with his already wide tenor range,” the band says. “And he could sing low too, as he proved to us with a version of Zappa’s Uncle Remus. We were also just happy to have found a buddy who wanted to sing. We were having a good time with the girl singers, but it was fun to have found not only a singer but a friend who would stay after the rehearsal and fool around and drink root beer with us.”
Three guys around a grand piano
The first album, 2120 in Spectacular Physical Health (2022), was produced by Jace Lasek and had been played to death on stage before it was recorded. The second went the other way, written in the summer of 2025 and built in the studio among a collection of vintage synthesizers and organs, with the band producing itself. The route there ran through Marc Collin, the French Parade founder and Nouvelle Vague leader, whose first verdict after seeing them play was that the showmanship was great and the songs were a little too complex. The band’s answer was to strip everything off. “We then all went to his studio and played him the songs in album order stripped down to only piano and vocals, also singing the arrangements and explaining the vision,” they say. “In a way this was how the songs were written, and we like taking care of all the details before walking into a studio so we can focus only on performances and tone. He smiled and said we should go all the way and produce it exactly the way we want. We’re grateful he understood our symphonic pop ambitions without even a recorded demo, just three guys singing around the grand piano!”
Producing themselves meant nobody to tell them when to stop. The band says it used that freedom to wait for the right take and to chase ideas further than a hired producer would have allowed. “Extending the sessions way too late for any sane person to follow along. Which is sometimes a problem. But we wanted to make something beautiful and a little crazy, referencing some stuff we love from the past that might have ended up sounding too much like the inspiration if anyone had worked with us, not knowing where to draw the line between the feeling and the idea.”
The title borrows from perfume, where powdery notes are the ones that surface slowly, and the eleven tracks are all about love in one state or another. When Seasons Change and Still You Love Me deal with forgiveness, Since I Told You How I Feel with the blur between friendship, love and betrayal, All The Words and Spotlight! with the young and short-lived kind, Love Supply with desire. Still You Love Me was the one that would not settle. “It had three different working titles and lyrics, with demos and recorded versions for all of them,” the band says. “One version was fully orchestrated with brass and strings, and we finally came around to a more rock and groove-oriented version. We started working on that one way before planning this new album and we were trying to figure out what we wanted to sound like, what was possible to do in the studio but that would also translate well on stage.”
The newest video is for Spotlight!, directed by Édouard Gingras and shot as a cross between film noir and an old Hollywood musical.
Suits on, even in the sun
Translating to the stage is the whole point for 2120. The band describes live music as something physical, felt in the fingertips, and the song it reaches for early in a set is the album’s lead single. “There’s All The Words that’s really fun to play live, especially early in the set,” they say. “The guitar riff really brings a lot of joy, then drums and bass come in and we’ve got a party! There’s this unity at the end of the song when we trade vocals and every piece of the puzzle comes together.”
The tweed and flannel suits, the dark glasses and the ties stay on at summer festivals, and the band treats the wardrobe as part of the act rather than a costume. “We just always loved the way bluesmen and soul singers go on stage with the cleanest looking suits, and then do all the crazy entertainment tricks. We think it also shows we care about what we do and about the people who show up. You wanna look good out there!”
Parisian Girls, released as a single in May, was written about arriving in the city as visitors, before the band had an address there. Asked whether living in Paris has changed the song, they say no: “I think we figured it out pretty well the first time around.”
The November run opens in London on 10 November, stops at La Boule Noire in Paris on 12 November, a show that sold out and prompted a second Paris date at Café de la Danse on 26 March 2027, and reaches Rome on 17 November before the flight home. After Casa del Popolo come L’Anti in Quebec City on 26 November and a hometown show at La Boîte Noire in Sherbrooke on 27 November. The Montreal date puts a band that built its following in the city’s bars and halls in front of M for Montreal’s industry crowd.
There is no song they are saving for the Quebec rooms, no single track they are curious to test on a home crowd. Every one of them, the band says, has to be played as though it is the highlight. “Every concert and audience is different, and it’s our duty to give every song what it needs to be that night’s highlight. Listening and seeing the people in the room will just help us find the best interpretation for the song in the moment, and make it unique and beautiful.” Behind the curtain in Paris they could only listen. At Casa del Popolo they will get to look.
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