The polka dot alien Québécois craze has landed, ladies and gentleman. Your average festival goer and casual listener will doubtless hear the name Angine de Poitrine increasingly uttered as their career trajectory, as well as their mothership, continues its stratospheric rise.
Prog-esq math rock, which has historically skewed male, (and at its worst snobbishly suspicious of outsiders), now has a mainstream poster child in Quebec and perhaps the world at large. A bold claim, but I estimate their mass appeal was evidenced by the sheer number of those anticipating their performance; an absolutely enormous sardine-like crowd had formed in front of the TD stage a full two hours before they were set to play. I had heard rumours that some dedicated fans waited the entire day in order to secure a good spot, and therefore sat through every other performance scheduled at the same stage on the day in question.
And when Angine would finally perform, I heard some estimates placing the total number of those in attendance at one-hundred thousand. I honestly could not see the end of the crowd from my vantage but am told it continued all the way to boulevard René-Lévesque. As I looked upon it, I saw men, women, and children of various ages, with many donning the same polkadot tops and face paint as their microtonal heroes. What’s more, modified Quebec flags waved in the night; a flash of strobe betrayed their gold fleur de lys and black and white polka dots. An indication of what a large cultural jewel this alien duo from Saguenay has become in very short order.
The music was heavy as expected. During most songs, Khn de Poitrine layered three looped guitar parts and one bass part creating a foundation for his solos and for Klek de Poitrine to play his drums linearly matching the rhythm of the melodic lines note for note before ramping up the intensity with a loud groove. This seems to be Angine’s winning formula logistically as the duo is able to be hard hitting without relying on other aliens or humans for assistance. Many microtonal riffs would be familiar to those who gobbled up the band’s recorded music, and the requisite bobbing up and down together with triangular symbols made their appearances. It was a powerful thing indeed to witness thousands of people putting their hands together to form a triangle and raising it above their head when prompted by the band while bobbing to odd metered tunes.
Truly, the entire night, from the technical prowess of the players, the loudness, and the enthusiasm of the crowd, had one going “hell yeah, brother!” during the entire show; and after seventy-five minutes or so, one-hundred thousand people dispersed suddenly snapping back to their non polka dot alien realities. They will doubtless remember where they were on the night, however. Cries of “Olé, olé, olé” rang out after the final chord; a chant normally reserved for the city’s iconic sports teams and Fête National was now being used to honor Angine de Poitrine. Safe to say the province full heartedly embraces their homegrown alien sons.
Photo credit: Benoît Rousseau
