Quebecois songwriter Klô Pelgag (Chloe Pelletier-Gagnon) began her sunset Main Stage set by dramatically and playfully running around the periphery of the stage in a bright red tunic and doing some contemporary dance-style poses before settling in at the keyboard surrounded by a fantastic baroque pop band clad in sécurité uniforms.
The thing is, Pelgag never really "settles down"; much like the songs off her Polaris long-listed L'Étoile thoracique, which switch tempo and feel mid-song regularly and are as musically demanding as they are lyrically flowing and melodically catchy, Pelgag kept moving between Korg, Rhodes and electric guitar.
Pelgag's almost proggy piano-pop is full of whimsy, and last night she drew the Hillside crowd into her imaginative world, singing of animals, angels, the sex of the stars, and Marie and Pierre Curie. She thanked us in English for our "cute clapping" and blamed her "boring" use of English on watching Gilmore Girls.
Part of the sonic landscape of L'Étoile thoracique was Pelgag's fanciful use of backup vocals, and she recreated those last night with help from her trio of singing string players. For "Les ferrofluides-fleurs" the bassist moved to ukulele and the viola player to keyboards, freeing Pelgag to dance around using a Hillside mug as a prop (and also something to drink from).
She finished with "Samedi soir à la violence," her biggest earworm, leaving us with a lasting memento of our musical trip through nature and the stars.
The thing is, Pelgag never really "settles down"; much like the songs off her Polaris long-listed L'Étoile thoracique, which switch tempo and feel mid-song regularly and are as musically demanding as they are lyrically flowing and melodically catchy, Pelgag kept moving between Korg, Rhodes and electric guitar.
Pelgag's almost proggy piano-pop is full of whimsy, and last night she drew the Hillside crowd into her imaginative world, singing of animals, angels, the sex of the stars, and Marie and Pierre Curie. She thanked us in English for our "cute clapping" and blamed her "boring" use of English on watching Gilmore Girls.
Part of the sonic landscape of L'Étoile thoracique was Pelgag's fanciful use of backup vocals, and she recreated those last night with help from her trio of singing string players. For "Les ferrofluides-fleurs" the bassist moved to ukulele and the viola player to keyboards, freeing Pelgag to dance around using a Hillside mug as a prop (and also something to drink from).
She finished with "Samedi soir à la violence," her biggest earworm, leaving us with a lasting memento of our musical trip through nature and the stars.
