After The Sting Of It

By Kelly McMichael
LHM Records | $10-$30

Reviewed by Craig Francis Power

Far be it for me to take up the mantle of music reviewer—a middle-aged man whose greatest contribution to the musical canon of Newfoundland and Labrador is a two-minute synth-ode to the free wine and cheese plates of art-gallery exhibition openings—but nevertheless, I once more have been called to the task, and lo, gentle reader, I have answered. Besides, it is a dark and dreary, painfully early Sunday morning in November, and there’s been so much rain the Waterford River has swamped its banks, the path I’m on is ankle-deep in freezing water, and there’s no one here but me.

Except for Kelly McMichael, that is. And her latest album, After The Sting Of It, which is—ahem—awash in watery imagery. Either lyrically, as in the enrapturing and chilling shroud of mist in “Fog,” or musically: the tinkling rain-stick percussion of “You Got It Wrong,” or the wet, echo-y guitar of “Ballad of Moody Green”—these songs’ primary tension resides in the push and pull of anticipation and release, what feels like an imminent explosion just beneath the surface, and what comes after.  Which is to say, there’s a fire in here too—but a smouldering one: a threat of heat McMichael makes us wait to feel. 

It’s there right off the hop. No one has ever got it this wrong before McMichael sings in, again, “You Got It Wrong,”—but she sounds exquisitely, exactly right about everything. In this absolutely listenable, groovy, off-kilter opening track, we’ll only see later, retroactively, just how right she is, just how she’s set this up, because, as she says, after the initial hit/after the sting of it/ you gotta live with it. And it’s this contradiction: the catastrophic thrill and its catastrophic comedown, that lives in the burning, underwater heart of this album.

In the tense, submarine, claustrophobic closeness of “Bomb,” for instance—a catchy, jangly, pop-rocky number reminiscent of Neko Case in a good mood—we’re told I’m a bomb, exploding and trying to keep it in/I’m a bomb, underwater, screaming: but the scream itself never quite comes. Or we only feel it afterwards. There’s a break into the bridge of the song, and then there’s the scream’s (or explosion’s) aftermath: And in this fire I found my power/ I opened the lid and set it off/ I fanned the flames when I had someone to blame/ And I let it shoot me straight to the top. 

But to the top of what? Emotional excitement? The stratosphere? But we know what happens when things go up, don’t we? They must come down.

What seems apparent then, fittingly, despite the speaker’s rightful acknowledgment of this act of empowerment—its celebratory words—is that musically, the bridge is tinged with a certain sadness, an aftershock of regret in what we’re told is a moment of liberation. And despite, furthermore, our launch back into the song’s joyful chorus at its conclusion—I’m a bomb/I’m a bomb/I’m a bomb—there’s a sense, understated as it may be, of doth protesting a little too much, if you know what I mean. That the act of giving expression to our rage—liberating as it may be—is not, in retrospect, without cost, or consequence.

Highly relatable. Given the fall, the winter here, we all go a bit mad in summer, when the heat returns, however long we have to wait for it.