A PuSh International Performing Arts Festival presentation. At the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on Sunday, January 28

Does Veda Hille write unusually literate indie-pop songs, or is she a composer of amped-up and acutely rhythmic lieder? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, and at her recent Vancouver East Cultural Centre show she muddied the water further by claiming that she’s finally found her true niche: in Christian rock.

Hille was kidding. But her comment came after a new song titled, I think, “The Nazarene”, which seemed to be about some guy named Jesus. It was most definitely not about those lovely Martin guitars from Nazareth, Pennsylvania, nor did it concern a chance meeting with a superannuated rock band from Scotland. And it also followed a string of songs lifted at least in part from the singer and pianist’s grandmother’s Depression-era hymnal.

Has Hille experienced a midlife conversion? No. But she has had a near-death experience, and she’s come back from the brink with a new batch of songs that pulsate with life.

Her PuSh Festival–sponsored show was a chance for Hille to preview her soon-to-be-recorded This Riot Life CD, revisit her 2001 song cycle Field Study, and introduce her new, seven-piece Swell Band. With cellist Peggy Lee, violinist Jesse Zubot, and clarinetist AK Coope onboard (and former guitarist Ford Pier away in Toronto), this unit tilts Hille further toward chamber music. Field Study, originally a suite for piano and voice alone, lost some of its spectral loneliness in this revamped version but gained colours as vibrant as those used by media artist Shawn Chappelle in his accompanying video. Meanwhile, the new songs, one arranged by Vancouver New Music artistic director Giorgio Magnanensi, are even richer, and Hille has accomplished the unlikely achievement of cloning herself by adding her Fits partner Patsy Klein, on background vocals and a number of small instruments, to the band. The similarities in their vocal phrasing are uncanny, and effective.

Perhaps the best indication where all of this is going came in Hille’s rendition of Paul Hindemith’s 1942 composition “The Moon”, with lyrics by Percy Bysshe Shelley. This was most definitely not pop music, yet its jagged rhythms and sawtooth melody sped forward like some lost classic from the original new-wave days. It was a fierce and uncompromising performance, and it shared those qualities with every other piece played. But what’s most telling is that Hille’s tunes, new and old, stand comparison to this unlikely collaboration between the 20th-century modernist and the 19th-century Romantic. Few musicians and lyricists, no matter the genre, have such a vibrant array of skills.