Plush guitar tones and mellow songwriting fuse with the gentle presence of a gifted frontman and introspective, honest lyrics, Connor Kelly & The Time Warp delight us through each minute of their latest work. This Egg is a lovingly crafted album that is poetic, colorful, and endlessly novel.
A band founded by Knoxville, Tennessee pair of brothers Connor and Ben Kelly, Connor Kelly & The Time Warp have relocated to Nashville, where they are now based. The group’s latest collection of tunes has been largely self-recorded, featuring a lot of DIY elements the band utilized to create a sound as intimate and as raw as possible. Adding this to the band’s intricately skeletal songwriting and modulated guitar riffs gives us a musical listen unlike any other. Lush and vivid, while being harmonically straightforward, often hypnotic, and usually featuring a blend of earthly beats against alien sonic atmospheres.
Taking influence from Radiohead and Elliott Smith, Connor Kelly and Co’s songwriting readily revels in its The Bends-era scruffy and rich guitar workings and its descriptive and cerebral lyrical work, delivered via Connor’s voice which bridges a gap between Elliot Smith and Beck. Connor Kelly & The Time Warp easily have a sound of their own, standing out on each song on This Egg, which was mixed and produced by Paul Q. Kolderie who has worked extensively with Dinosaur Jr., Pixies, and Radiohead themselves.
Balanced between its electrified and acoustic conventions, the album features dazzling and hypnotic cuts such as ‘Imitate You’ and the titular one ‘The Egg’, revolving solely around grandiose and poignant acoustic guitar parts that lead the arrangements, mirroring a Morning Phase-like charm to their elegant songwriting and deep low-end production, balanced by cuts such as the manic ‘Roy G. Biv’, the hypnotic starter ‘Nocamoa’, and the groovy, Nirvana-like ‘Enemy’, three examples of the band’s abilities in orchestrating lush walls of guitars. The album also features the endlessly unique soundscapes of ‘Imitation Gold’ and its thin electric guitar part that quickly comes to define this short stunner’s unquestionable presence, starting the album’s second half.
The mystical ‘Retrograde’ showcases the band’s elegant songwriting and their abilities in blending acoustic and electric guitar parts, blending them with creative synth sounds, to create full-sounding, magical soundscapes. Definitely one of the album’s most outstanding cuts. Right afterwards comes ‘The Nightmare’s Finally Over’ with its inventive, synth-based arrangement. Probably the only song on the album that mostly ditches the guitars entirely, save for a sputtering, venomous, solo-like lead line, this song’s nuanced songwriting, dark environs, and slow, brooding pace make it another outstanding piece in terms of coloration. The song’s last 30 seconds alone were enough to win me over. The album’s closer ‘The Only Way to Get Out’ is another efficient masterpiece that features an essential bass and drum groove running throughout, the song’s arrangement features a light and airy acoustic part, balanced by a wealth of piano ornamentations that make the song an eerie and gorgeous one to book end the album with.
The album’s unique running theme of entitlement and how it can affect someone’s personality, urging us to not hate people whose realities are distorted from always getting what they want, is a unique one to say the least. Delivered in a balanced way and with thoughtful lyrical lines, the album’s lyrical content is another display of the band’s efficiency in getting their ideas across in a mature, calculated, and intentional way. The Egg ultimately ends up as a beautiful-sounding album full of intention and artistic cohesion. A delightful and rewarding listen that will sit with me for a long time, unwrapping the countless layers on its nuanced songs’ instrumental parts and lyrics.
