Klô Pelgag

Klô Pelgag is an acclaimed artist in Quebec and Canada, with 20 Félix awards at the ADISQ Gala, a JUNO Award, one nomination on the short list and one on the long list for the Polaris Music Prize, sold-out concerts at MTelus and collaborations and appearances at concerts by CRi, Patrick Watson and Pomme. Her latest opus, Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs, has garnered accolades from the media. In Canada, Exclaim! gave it four stars, and in Quebec the reviews were unanimous: five stars from Le Journal de Montréal, “Le LP de 2020, on le tient”; 9/10 from Le Canal Auditif, “une œuvre pertinente et audacieuse”; and four stars from La Presse, “un album riche”. 

Her last opus, Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs, has spread beyond the province and the country, with rave reviews in France, in Télérama, with its coveted ffff rating, and in Longueur d’onde, Rolling Stone France, FrancoFan and more. Influential American journalist Anthony Fantano reviewed the album on his YouTube channel, The Needle Drop – which was unheard of for a Francophone album at the time: “There are tons of wonderful creative highlights in every nook and cranny of this project.” In recent years, she performed in France at La Maroquinerie and in the UK at the sold-out Lexington, as well as in Japan, Belgium and Switzerland. 

With her first full-length, L’alchimie des monstres in 2013, she scooped several awards, including the Prix Barbara from the French Ministry of Culture, the Grand Prix de la Francophonie from the Académie Charles Cros, the Prix Miroir Célébration de la langue française at the Festival d’été de Québec and the Prix Rapsat-Lelièvre. With her second record, L’étoile thoracique, she received the prestigious Prix Félix-Leclerc, as well as the Prix de la chanson SOCAN for the song “Ferrofluides-fleurs”. 

Abracadabra, like a quest for the absolute, like a desire to believe in something. For all the knots you have to untie to free yourself and reveal who you really are, fearless and shameless. A formula you wish could fix everything, instantly resolving all problems. A word you repeat while staring out of the window. Maybe if you keep saying it long enough, it’ll open a door inside of you? Abracadabra, a ridiculous yet beautiful word that would save you from having to make the effort to help your neighbour or to help yourself. Abracadabra, a word that makes me want to untangle it and to which I’d like to assign a new meaning. Abracadabra, like this magic pill prescribed by my doctor to sleep, like my phone that stops me from overthinking when my mind is going to pieces, like the alcohol that comforts me and gives me back this joy that escapes me too often. And in this quest for the absolute and for meaning, in this endless pursuit of fun, there is the desire to create something I’m unfamiliar with but that resembles me somehow. Music that pierces my soul as fiercely as my emotions, like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff and constantly about to fall, creating the urge to write. And every which way and probably forever, I’ll try to capture this intangible, unspeakable thing, this fleeting feeling that sometimes makes me want to be silly and say it: here we go, abracadabra.   

Abracadabra will be out October 11th, 2024.