Miriodor have always thrived in the margins, stitching together music that refuses to sit still: too jagged for folk, too mischievous for chamber, too kaleidoscopic for straight-ahead rock. "Live 97" captures them at a turning point, standing on the tightrope between eras, balancing the end of one partnership and the beginning of another, while juggling all the madness of their fourth studio album, "Elastic Juggling", in front of a Quebec City audience.

This isn’t simply a document of a band playing its latest material on stage. It’s more like watching acrobats rebuild the circus tent mid-performance. Pieces that on record already leaned toward the surreal - knife throwers, motorcycle-riding bears, fortune tellers - here sprout extra limbs, veer into longer detours, or collapse and reassemble in unpredictable forms. “Bal Con” unfurls with a sharp elegance that quickly curdles into zigzag rhythms; “Mme X” is still spooky and sly but delivered with extra theatrical weight; “Le Terrible Naufrage Du Petit Navire” sounds less like a shipwreck than a ship gleefully choosing to capsize.

Part of the thrill lies in the lineup itself. Sabin Hudon’s final dances with the group’s reeds weave in and out of Bernard Falaise’s freshly sharpened guitar lines, while Pascal Globensky and Rémi Leclerc keep everything both taut and slightly off-kilter, as if the rhythm section were grinning at some inside joke. Stéphanie Simard’s violin brings an edge of nervous lyricism, and Nicolas Masino anchors the whole contraption with bass and additional keys. It’s a sextet that sounds like a dozen players in a funhouse mirror.

There’s also something oddly poignant about hearing Miriodor in 1997 from the vantage point of 2025. The circus they built then was a counter-spectacle, a rebuttal to rock’s solemnity and prog’s tendency to drown in its own gravitas. What they offered instead was artful chaos, wit, and daredevil precision - a reminder that progressive music could be serious without being self-serious, and absurd without being throwaway.

So "Live 97" is not just a long-lost artifact for collectors. It’s a snapshot of risk-taking energy, of a group willing to stumble for the sake of surprise, of a band whose sense of play was as sharp as their musicianship. Listening now, you can almost smell the sawdust and greasepaint, hear the juggling clubs clattering to the floor, and see the audience - half bemused, half delighted - caught in the spell of Miriodor’s delirious, demented big top.