Youth in revolt: Maisonneuve's summer cover image portrays an angry hipster lashing out at the bad music of the world.

When I was younger, whenever my sister and I used to argue over which movie to watch or which CD to listen to, my father would always recite the same Latin phrase: "De gustibus non est disputandum." It means, basically, that a person's taste can't be disputed. It was his way of telling us to calm down: neither of us was ever going to convince the other one of why our preferred movie or music was better. We just had different taste.

And that's all well and good. But the cover story of Maisonneuve Magazine's summer issue flies in the face of my dad's old catchphrase. (Full disclosure: I'm an intern at Maisonneuve.) It's called "The Music We Hate," and it's the result of a rather daring proposition: Maisonneuve's editors asked seven top music critics to write essays about the bands they can't stand.

Bent By Elephants is a band I always expected would play a great show. On MySpace, the Montreal-based group's songs caught my attention, but they felt a bit hemmed in by the four walls of my computer, so to speak. I got the sense that live, they would really have the necessary space to breathe. Seeing them at Divan Orange last Sunday confirmed my suspicions. The band was launching their first LP, called This Is Water, and they played a beautiful, energy-filled set to mark the occasion.

We all know the story - on an epic journey home after fighting in the Trojan War, one of the challenges Ulysses had to overcome was the threat posed by the Sirens, three enchanting women whose singing was known to distract sailors into wrecking their ships on the rocky shore of their island. This myth is also behind the title of choreographer Dominique Porte's latest work, Ulysse, nous et les sirènes.

The first time I saw the Coal Choir was a rather mysterious experience. The show was at Eastern Bloc, and when it was about to begin the audience was led from the main space along a winding hallway into a small back room, where the members of the choir stood, framed by candlelight, branches, and various found objects. The whole moment was otherworldly. Yesterday, I relived some of that experience when I went to see a rehearsal of Olivia: A Folk Opera, Coal Choir's latest, and last, production.

Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal has been on something of a story ballet kick in recent years. But the company isn't doing story ballets the way you would expect - with lavish productions of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, or Giselle. Instead, Les Grands is filling their repertoire with avant-garde re-imaginings of classic tales. First, in 2001, there was Kim Brandstrup's The Queen of Spades. In 2003 the company commissioned Belgian choreographer Stijn Celis to create a new version of Cinderella for its dancers. In 2004 they staged Jean-Christophe Maillot's Romeo and Juliet, and the next year came Kader Belarbi's La Bête et la Belle. Maillot's R & J was restaged in 2006, and is being performed again this year throughout October. Which doesn't necessarily surprise me, but it is, at least for me, disappointing.

Was this confetti part of Osheaga art? Well, not technically, but gawd wasn't it pretty?

Well, Osheaga is finished, and there were some crazy things to see at the weekend-long festival. Josh Ritter fell to his knees and howled on stage, Chris Martin skipped, frolicked, and who knows what else throughout Coldplay's set, and Alice Glass collapsed to the stage and remained there, unmoving, for - let's be honest - about a third of Crystal Castles' stage time. But don't be fooled into thinking that the only entertainment was on stage. It ain't called the Osheaga Music and Arts Festival for nothing, friends. There was a lot of art at Osheaga, and it was pretty great. Herewith, a rundown in case you missed it.