BY Daniel SylvesterPublished Aug 31, 2026
Before helping to close out the final night of the St‑Roch XP at one of the outdoor stages along Quebec City's Rue St‑Joseph, Shunk played a short set for a select crowd in the impossibly tiny basement of festival organizer BLUEFEU's offices on Saturday (August 29).
Packing about 30 people — plus one child — into a single, sweaty room allowed the Montreal quartet to push their confrontational shoegaze and weirdo energy into a setting that couldn't have been more intimate.
Joined by guitarist Peter Baylis, bassist Julia Hill and drummer Adrian Vaktor, vocalist Gabrielle Domingue offered a meek French greeting before the group dropped into an unreleased track, the Exclaim! Class of 2025 grads immediately showing how sharp and dialled‑in their playing has become across just four years together.
Moving into "Goblin" from their 2025 self‑released debut LP Shunkland, Domingue delivered the track with hand movements that echoed voguing, leaning in close enough to nearly graze the faces of those packed into the tight front row.
After some more new material and their recently released single "Party Girl," Baylis finally found enough space to bounce in place, guitar slung high against his neck, while Vaktor and Hill leaned into the cramped setup to lock into an incredibly tight rhythm for album highlight "Rat King."
With her mix of speak‑singing, high‑toned melodies that charmingly slipped in and out of tune, and bursts of wordless vocalization, Domingue was fully loosened up by the show's midpoint. She leaned into her personality, pulling down her sunglasses to make eye contact with the crowd and pushing her handheld mic close to Hill so they could duet through parts of the choruses.
Without a proper stage separating her from the audience, Domingue used album cut "Tennis" to wander into the crowd, which really just meant taking a few steps toward the back before looping around again. Her performance of the lyrically animated "Snake" raised the energy again, landing a note so high in the register that the crowd broke into rare mid-song applause.
As Baylis and Hill ran their instruments through racks of pedals — and Domingue tweaked her own vocal effects — much of the set felt rawer and less fussed-over live than it does on record. As they closed with another new track, Shunk's 40‑minute set made it feel like the quartet are starting to fuse their brainy and brawny sides into something that can match the huge ambition their sound has hinted at all along.
