Kelly McMichael moved to St. John's more than a decade ago, but when Exclaim! reaches her on the phone, she jokes briefly about the confusion that results from her still having a Peterborough area code. Her phone number is enduring evidence of the artist's Ontario roots in a career that's otherwise deeply entrenched in Newfoundland's DIY music scene.
"Sometimes, the alt-rock crowd gets overshadowed by the Newfoundland folk scene," she reflects of her role in the local arts community. "It's wonderful that such a huge part of the culture out here is music-based, but the tourism industry makes its money off of the stuff that's folk/trad-leaning."
But while audiences across Canada are familiar with Alan Doyle-adjacent sounds, McMichael is keen to shine a light on the punk and rock artists who have coalesced around Jake Nicoll, a singer-songwriter who plays in the Burning Hell and has become the go-to producer for a ring of friends and collaborators like John Moran, Len O'Neill and Jenina MacGillivray.
"There are a lot of people who end up staying here from Ontario, but you gotta you gotta earn your approval, that's for sure," she says of her integration into the East Coast's insular community. "It's a different place. It's isolated. It's so far away from everywhere else. The culture is different, but there's also a lack of inclusion in the rest of what the country's doing."
McMichael made roots in Atlantic Canada with some help from Nicoll, who recorded and co-produced McMichael's 2021 solo debut, Waves. She had planned on making the whole thing for $2,000, until grants allowed her get more ambitious. The result was an impeccable 10-song collection that synthesizes classic rock melodicism with flourishes of '80s new wave and '90s alt-rock. Breaking free of the synthpop she used to make under the name RENDERS, Waves was short-listed for the Polaris Music Prize and earned McMichael wins at the East Coast Music Awards and Music NL Awards.
While she's still not a household name by any stretch, it helped McMichael develop beyond her past role as a backing player for acts like Sarah Harmer and the Hidden Cameras to become a sought-after solo act. The positive reception for Waves means that she is keen to expose her newfound fan base to more challenging sounds on the follow-up, After the Sting of It (out today on LHM Records).
"On my debut record, I felt more focused on trying to capture people's attention, by trying to get a really catchy song and put it in their face — like, 'Look at this great songwriting I can do,'" she reflects. "Since this is my second record, and I guess I have the confidence of people liking the last record, I felt like I had a bit more more time to like sit in a moment and explore the instrumentation."
The popularity of Fiona Apple's 2020 album Fetch the Bolt Cutters further emboldened McMichael to push the envelope, showing her that audiences could be receptive to jarring, experimental takes on pop.
"I just wanted some weird, janky, raw-sounding [arrangements]," she says. "It's more personal that way. I think the rawness of the themes in a song, and the vulnerability, comes through if it's a raw home recording. It has some of the flaws of me not being like the best engineer in the world."
The Bolt Cutters influence can be felt directly in opening cut "You Got It Wrong," with its rickety soundscape of jazzy piano says, intricately layered harmonies and click-clacky hand percussion.
While the rest of After the Sting of It isn't sonically indebted to Fiona Apple, the sense of eclecticism persists: the album makes room for hazy new age synth ballads ("Fog"), punchy pop rock ("Bomb," which has charted on CBC Music's Top 20), acoustic bossa nova ("Too Soon to Tell") and bite-sized instrumental sketches ("Spell," "After"). The stomping 2023 single "Tour from Hell," which chronicles a disastrous tour in which she got sick, is tacked onto the digital version as an extra track.
"I don't mean to shit on pop music, because I like a lot of pop music, but I think pop production has gotten so polished, digitized and diluted with computer correction, pitch correction," she muses. "I think we've lost the human, raw element that is the part that really moves you, and so I really wanted to lean into that."
Once again, working with co-producer Nicoll and a cast of local contributors, McMichael embraced stylistic diversity, instead finding a sense of cohesion with her lyrical themes. "A few people who have listened to the record [have said] it's almost verging on a concept album. There's almost a bit of a storyline," she observes.
This loose narrative traces the arc of a relationship from the lovestruck self-delusion of its early days to the lucid awareness of the aftermath, with the first half of After the Sting of It highlighting "angry and upsetting" emotions, and the second side focusing on "happy ending, new beginnings vibes," according to the songwriter.
With her sophomore album heading out into the world, McMichael is preparing to head out on tour. This time, it shouldn't be another "Tour from Hell," since the success of Waves has meant that booking shows throughout Atlantic Canada has been a breeze, further cementing her as a staple of the region's music scene.
"I don't get the same reception in Ontario with the bookers that I do on the East Coast," she admits, "but it's been cool to feel like I'm like a known East Coast artist now."