If post-Toronto was a genre, Kelly McMichael would be its poster child, champion, and priestess. Her debut solo album, Waves, is half confessional, half musing, as this musical chameleon ushers us about, through the eddies of her life in the wake of fronting past musical projects like RENDERS, Rouge and Thelma & Louise. This is the evolved form of a musician who has been shaped by experience and learned when to break the rules and when to make them her own.
Now living in St. John’s and working with co-producer Jake Nicoll (The Burning Hell), McMichael has undergone a sonic reinvention from synth-pop to… something both exciting and yet familiar. Is it art? Is it science? Is it alchemy, forged in the fires of the music industry?
The album is, at its heart, an affirmation of identity; an almost inherent quality for something that has had eight years to snowball. The years it has taken to release the material have resulted in a vignette looking back on an era of McMichael’s life, examining relationships, friendships, jobs, cities, with a sort of self-aware perspective woven through it about the effects of time.
Rather than the phoenix that has risen from the ashes of McMichael’s more electronic RENDERS—which still endures, albeit as a separate project, which can be discerned with a trained eye—or even her rock-oriented band Kelly McMichael and The Gloss, Kelly McMichael’s debut album is the distilled and refined formed of all the above and supercharged through the magical power of funding. Waves is practically a greatest hits album.
“RENDERS was always just me. I just made a name change for easier searchability and because I was doing softer stuff,” says McMichael. “I like the name RENDERS. It’s my mom’s family name, so it was a feminist choice, but it’s brutal to search… renders of files… even if you go with RENDERS music, RENDERS band… Just thought I couldn’t go wrong with my name, and I wouldn’t need to change it.
“[This] just felt like more of a rock record. I was playing more piano-based stuff that didn’t seem to fit the renders vibe. I didn’t think anyone knew or cared about RENDERS, so I didn’t think anyone would notice.”
Which has been something of a humble misconception on McMichael’s part; in certain circles, the name RENDERS is often spoken by hushed voices with an air of reverence. Mention McMichael in the company of musicians and you’ll be regaled with descriptions of intense harmonies and skills beyond measure. Her reputation is befitting of someone perpetually under threat of being poached for the next big band.
But a quest for identity is a quest for identity, and growth without movement is simply compression. And so, a band was softly brought in (tapping multi-instrumentalists Sarah Harris (Property) and Maria Peddle), some shows were scheduled, the more synth-heavy tunes were set aside for future RENDERS projects, and the best of the rest were compiled into an album devoid of filler.
“I just put all my best stuff on it. So, it was a combo of old stuff with ‘The Gloss’ and some stuff with Renders and some new stuff,” says McMichael. “Not to discredit the players and Jake especially. They are amazing, but this record is like my best stuff from the past eight years. Just took me a long time to render it down to the base of me.
“The sound changing and doing a variety of styles is all me. I’ve written loud rock songs, soft piano shit, and synthy dance music for years. I just didn’t get any decent funding until 2019, so I had a lot of stuff to jam on to one record for my ‘debut’.”
Opening with “I Missed Out” McMichael sets a big tone for the album. With a bassline that could have been plucked from Steve Miller Band circa 1973, the song channels Ferris Bueller vibes re: the speed of life—even if you are paying attention. Despite what the title suggests, it’s a good kicking-off point for an album that plays out like Thelma & Louise, making for an autobiography most of us only wish we could live up to.
“Out the Window” is our assurance that McMichael has far from abandoned the synths. It’s as if Sloan met AIR, balancing harmonies against a delicious wall of space pop as McMichael indulges in a bit of escapism from lackluster jobs and partners.
“Stepping Stone“—and I swear this isn’t a track-by-track breakdown, but as I said, there’s not a lot of filler here—tells a tale of ships passing in the night amongst the often tangled and tentative relationships formed in the music industry. The highlight here is, naturally, more of those legendary harmonies, and a string arrangement that George Martin probably wouldn’t have turned his nose up at.
“She Makes Men,” a song about love triangles and character development, is one of the clear examples we have of The Goss era, having appeared as an entry for CBC’s Searchlight Contest entry in 2015. It’s probably the most folk-pop contribution to the album—particularly when you hear the solo acoustic guitar version—conjuring comparisons to Regina Spektor and Meaghan Smith.
“Montreal” stands out as an obvious single, with McMichael capturing the essence of a time and place that likely exists for everyone at some point in their life, but somehow inevitably gets associated with that particular city. Montreal isn’t a city, it’s a phase.
The final two songs on the album, “Love is On” and “Can’t At All,” demand special attention. While the album swings through a good swath of variety (looking at you, “Good Friends,” with your lo-fi barebones) these two tracks have proven to be both the most underappreciated, particularly for their status as odd ducks. “Love is On” acts as a toe-curling soulful epilogue to the album—what was originally intended as the closing track—with McMichael recapping her journey through Montreal, London, Toronto with an abundance of style. It’s a bit of a tone-shift but emphasizes the versatility of an artist who has already taken us for a whirlwind (and thus claims its spot as my favourite track on the album).
“Can’t At All,” however, has proven to be a polarizer, thanks to McMichael leaning hard on the synths. This could have been released in 1998 and I wouldn’t have known any better. It’s tastier than a fruit roll-up at my middle school sockhop. Cancel math class and cue the smoke machine. This is McMichael clearly marking her territory and stating “I’m still a synth girl.”
“I wanted to include ‘Can’t At All,’ because I think the record is like all my best stuff—an introduction to me—and that synth stuff is a big part of me and was an important RENDERS song,” says McMichael.
It also makes more sense in the context in which it was intended: as a secret song.
“There isn’t really a way to do secret songs anymore in today’s world of how music is consumed, so it’s just the surprise at the end,” says McMichael. “My publicists keep telling me no one gives a crap about albums anymore and it’s just a singles market, which makes me very sad. It’s ok in some ways, but not for me, not for my first record that I’ve been waiting to do forever.”
As one of the most exciting albums we’ve heard this year, it’s all the more intriguing to know that there’s still some gold left in those hills. Although only 10 songs appearing on the album, a total of 18 demos were prepared for Waves. 14 were recorded and, ultimately, four were cut. When an album like Kelly McMichael’s Waves is this good you can’t help be go looking for easter eggs.