Shred Kelly has a clear view of the future on their new, introspective sixth album “Blurry Vision” which they will bring to Lethbridge at the Owl Acoustic Lounge, Dec. 15.
“ I think the last time we were there was summer of 2021, so it’s been a few years. We‘re excited to come back,” said Shred Kelly keyboardist/ vocalist Sage McBride, who along with her partner Tim Newton / vocals, banjo/ guitar; guitarist Ty West and drummer Ryan Mildenberger, make up Shred Kelly.
McBride is looking forward to sharing the new music though it is little more darker and introspective than their previous works.
They released their latest album on Oct 20.
“ It was our sixth album so we’re getting up there in albums,” she chuckled.
“It’s good. It feels good. The process of writing is always fun. Our writing style has definitely evolved and changed since we’ve began. But it’s always fun, like the production of it all and writing the songs and working on it and then it feels nice to put it out there . But then you want to start working on the next thing right away too. So it doesn’t ever end,” McBride continued
The album is a lot more low key than their previous albums.
“ There‘s still a few high energy songs in there, but we definitely wrote it during the years 2020 and 2021. So times were feeling a little bit heavier in our personal lives and also just in the world. So I guess we weren’t feeling as sort of anthemic as we have in the past in our writing and we’re sort of evaluating the world a little more in our personal lives and dealing with some anxiety and stress related to what was happening in the world around us. But the album still reaches for hope throughout. There is still the hopefulness that I think that we’re known for and there are some songs that are pretty joyous. So we tried not to make it too depressing, even though that’s how we were feeling,” McBride said.
McBride and Newton recently had a baby which also contributed to the music.
“ Yeah, for sure, and I think that played into our emotions a lot too, just feeling really isolated and then also sort of everything in the world shifted as we became new parents. So we were kind of cut off from family and friends so we had to kind of lean on each other a lot more so there’s songs like ‘Cracks In the Finish’ kind of like being able to love each other even though how you’re kind of realizing you’re not entirely perfect or it’s hard to be something for the one person being everything that you need is kind of a challenge. And then the song ‘ The Days We have Left’ is feeling like not being your best self and asking your partner to love you despite your flaws and love you in those periods where you don’t feel your best. So there’s definitely some heavier themes,” she said.
“And the opening song ‘Stained Glass’ is about a storm coming in. And when we wrote that one, it was sort of like the storm that was coming towards the world and kinds of sets the tone for whole album. But the album ends with ‘Nothing for Awhile’ which is sort of like our signature high energy song that it’s definitely a bit of a darker theme than maybe what we’ve sung about in the past,” she said,
Shred Kelly has three videos out for the new album for “ Cracks In the Finish,” and “Nothing for a While” and “Another Place.”
“We filmed all of the videos so far from the record with our neighbour Dylan Siggers. So he was also the guy who filmed the ‘Sing to the Night’ video in one shot and then he moved in next to Tim and I so now we collaborate on lots of things. On our last record he did a lot of the videos for that one too. Because he’s right next door, we just send a text saying ‘come on over we’re brainstorming some ideas,’” she said.
“With ‘Cracks In the Finish,’ we just tried to keep it fairly simple and feature Fernie as a background in it. Then ‘Nothing For a While,’ the song is sort of about the frustrations with being constantly overstimulated by bad news or having your phone on you all the time so you have access to information but it’s not always the information that you want to be flooded with so it’s sort of that frustration with the modern world. So Tim gets to act really frustrated in that video, which I think he does a really good job at. He’s a great actor,” McBride laughed.
“And then ‘Another Place’ we had different backgrounds and everybody wore different coloured shirts and we were able to film that one in our rehearsal space which was kind of nice because a lot of our videos are weather dependent and we can’t shoot at certain times of day because of lighting. So it was nice to just be able to do it in a controlled environment in our rehearsal space and have some fun with it. So yeah, they’re really super fun videos. And we have another one in the works for the song ‘Lost Without You.” which will probably come out before the end of the year, but not exactly sure,” she said, adding she is not sure how many they will shoot for the album.
“ We love making music videos. We’ll just make as many as we can. With the last album we just kept as long as we could come up with a budget or come up with a DIY way of making things. We’ll do as many as possible, but sometimes the budget runs out so I guess until then,” she said.
McBride said response to the new music has been very positive. They played some of the new songs on a recent tour of Germany.
