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**Klô Pelgag - L'Étoile Thoracique**
★★★★☆

In the pantheon of Quebec's most beguiling musical exports, Chloé Pelletier-Gagnon has carved out a singular niche that defies easy categorisation. Recording under the wonderfully baroque moniker Klô Pelgag, this Saguenay-born artist has spent the better part of a decade crafting songs that feel like dispatches from some parallel universe where Björk collaborated with Kate Bush on the soundtrack to a surrealist film about maritime folklore.

*L'Étoile Thoracique*, her third full-length offering, arrives four years after the critically acclaimed *Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs* established her as one of Canada's most intriguing voices. That previous album saw Pelgag expanding her sound beyond the intimate chamber pop of her debut, incorporating orchestral flourishes and electronic textures that complemented her already distinctive approach to melody and narrative. The intervening years have clearly been productive ones – this new collection feels both more cohesive and more adventurous than its predecessor, suggesting an artist who has fully embraced her role as Quebec's premier purveyor of fantastical pop music.

The album opens with "Décembre," a track that immediately establishes the record's preoccupation with seasonal imagery and emotional transformation. Pelgag's voice, always her most potent instrument, floats over a bed of strings and subtle electronics, creating an atmosphere that's simultaneously wintry and warm. It's a perfect introduction to an album that consistently finds beauty in contradiction – songs that are melancholy yet uplifting, complex yet accessible, rooted in Quebec's cultural specificity yet somehow universal in their emotional reach.

Musically, *L'Étoile Thoracique* occupies that fertile ground between art pop and folk, with detours into electronic experimentation and orchestral grandeur. Pelgag's arrangements have grown increasingly sophisticated, incorporating everything from woodwinds to synthesizers without ever losing sight of the song at the centre. There's a theatrical quality to much of the material that recalls early Tori Amos or the more adventurous moments in Feist's catalogue, but Pelgag's sensibility is entirely her own – more whimsical, perhaps, and certainly more willing to embrace the absurd.

The album's centrepiece, "La maison jaune," showcases Pelgag at her most cinematic. Built around a hypnotic piano figure and adorned with strings that seem to breathe with the rhythm, it's a song that unfolds like a short story, complete with vivid characters and mysterious plot developments. Pelgag's lyrics, delivered in her native French, paint pictures that linger long after the music fades. Even listeners without fluency in the language will find themselves drawn into her narratives through sheer force of personality and melodic invention.

Equally compelling is "Umami," a track that finds Pelgag exploring more electronic territory without abandoning her folk roots. The song builds from a minimal opening into something approaching a dance track, though one designed more for contemplation than movement. It's perhaps the clearest indication of where Pelgag might be headed next – towards a sound that incorporates more contemporary production techniques while maintaining her commitment to unconventional song structures and poetic imagery.

The closing track, "Rémora," serves as a perfect bookend to the album's opening gambit. Here, Pelgag strips things back to their essential elements – voice, piano, and space – creating a moment of genuine intimacy after forty minutes of increasingly elaborate arrangements. It's a reminder that, beneath all the orchestral flourishes and electronic textures, these remain fundamentally human songs about love, loss, and the strange beauty of existence.

In the context of contemporary Canadian music, *L'Étoile Thoracique* feels like something of a miracle – an album that's both deeply rooted in its cultural context and completely unafraid to experiment. Pelgag has created a body of work that stands alongside the best of Arcade Fire or Broken Social Scene while remaining utterly distinct from either. This is music that rewards close listening, revealing new details with each encounter while never losing its immediate emotional impact.

Four albums into her career, Klô Pelgag has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary pop music. *L'Étoile Thoracique* suggests she's just getting started.