Abracadabra, by Klô Pelgag | The versatile singer

Energized by experience and circumstances, Klô Pelgag wrote, composed, arranged and produced her album alone Abracadabraone of the most anticipated releases of the fall. A five-part foray into the world of an artist in search of meaning whose most recent work questions, frowns, worries and calms down.

The combination of circumstances

“When I started making music 10 years ago, I saw what I did [réaliser Abracadabra seule] like another job that had nothing to do with me,” Klô Pelgag told The Press. A decade later, when she began creating her fourth album, Klô knew that her co-director Sylvain Deschamps (with whom she had always worked) would not participate in the project, for personal reasons.

The initial panic gave way to the idea that “this was actually a good thing.” She would be the one to orchestrate and produce her record herself, in addition to the rest. “I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to make the decision, but things happen sometimes and take you somewhere else, so I decided to try it on my own.” » The one who hears the arrangements in her head had already started tinkering with the technical aspect of the thing and recording alone in her studio, without being able to develop this part of her much because “the space was taken”.

“There, I knew I could do it […] and I learned a lot while making the record, says Klô. It gave me creative freedom, even if, at times, I was really disgusted with technical stuff and bugs! [rires] But all of this became a life experience in itself, which left its mark on creation. »

The sad epic

“Even when I’m sad, there’s a side of me that aspires to grandeur,” says Klô Pelgag. His contrasting music, whose flights are poetic and complex, is even more so on this new album where we strongly feel the desire to try the unknown, to create a universe that is both explosive and refined. The writing shows a lot of melancholy; the composition and arrangements sometimes prolong this feeling, but more often contradict it with a layer of majesty.

On Freethe first single on the record, we even want to dance, even if the words make us cry. “It’s very unconscious, I imagine it’s a reflection of who I am. » As in life, the singer-songwriter says she is looking for the epic in music.

Although part of her doesn’t want to take herself too seriously – “I’m just making music!” » –, another considers “that it is a question of life and death, something so important”. All this lives in her and mixes with a wisdom that her decade of career has given her. “We understand as we grow up that music can be anything and it seems that seeing it like that allows us to let go of a certain seriousness, a certain rigidity,” says Klô Pelgag.

Abracadabra

“I haven’t yet found the right adjective to explain the tone with which I hear it in my head,” says Klô, laughing, about the term “abracadabra”. Does she see it as a word of hope, the dream of seeing a word magically get rid of misery? Or rather like a word of disappointment, the realization that everything is going too badly for a simple word, as we believed as children, to resolve everything?

At the end of the line, she hesitates. She knows that the term has connotations and is a little afraid of all the puns from the magic lexicon that journalists are likely to indulge in, she says with a laugh.

In fact, she only says the word twice on the album, in the chorus of the piece Jim Morrison : “I would like to belong to a perfect moment/Abracadabra”. “That’s exactly how I hear it,” she says.

For Klô, “abracadabra” is the hope of accessing something better, something great and flawless, without believing in it, even with despair, but with a glimmer of optimism all the same, somewhere. This is what his texts and his music reflect: fear and distress, adorned with a veil of hope, because we have to hope a little.

Fuel Anxiety

Our Lady of Seven Sorrows was created in a stormy cycle of Klô’s life, during which sadness took up too much space. For Abacadabrahappiness finally installed after Our Lady of Seven Sorrows had not broken camp, but the anxiety lurking inside Klô had always lurked.

“I have had major episodes of anxiety, which come from a certain pressure that I put on myself with my role as a mother,” she confides. It also combined with creation, in a completely different context where you no longer have all your time for yourself. I saw it as a very big challenge. »

It’s also what pushed her to try new things, to stimulate her development as an artist (“her leitmotif in creation,” she says). So that anxiety did not invade the process too much, he also had to ignore external expectations as much as possible. “Even if mine compared to myself are already quite high,” she adds, a laugh in her voice.

Fortunately, although she initially imagined and created everything alone, her friends and musicians later joined her in the studio. “When it was time to record, I was suddenly sharing it with everyone. There is something transformative when there is space for the discourse and creativity of others, she notes. Despite everything, I am a team player, I really like working with people. »

The inspirational child

Klô Pelgag is no longer the person she was when she wrote The Powerful Our Lady of Seven Sorrows. Among a thousand changes, the most important: the birth of his daughter. The one that fascinates her and of which she is proud, easy to hear as soon as she broaches the subject of motherhood.

On the room Letter to a young poeta reference to the famous work by Rainer Maria Rilke of the (almost) same title, it is to his daughter that Klô is addressing. She talks to him about her worry, about what a mother is, that is to say a fallible human above all, even if she would do anything for her child. She also talks to him about her certainty that everything will be fine, about her desire to see her happy to exist. All of this can be heard throughout the album.

“I feel like all the stuff that’s happening to me, just opening social media for example, it’s so violent, so depressing. I wonder how to not act as if it doesn’t exist, but so that it doesn’t get into me so much, says Klô. It made me ask myself a lot of questions, especially because I have a child now and I want the best for the future, for the children to have access to something beautiful when they are older. »

Hope is born from despair.

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Abracadabra

Klo Pelgag

Secret City Records