Good Lovelies not afraid to change things up

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This article was published 31/05/2018 (3051 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Not many people would consider Winnipeg one of the most romantic cities in the world, but for Kerri Ough of folk-pop band the Good Lovelies, the city is at the top of her list.

 

“My husband used to live in Thompson before we moved here (St. John’s, N.L.), so if I didn’t have enough time to get all the way up to Thompson or he didn’t have time to get to Toronto, we would meet up in Winnipeg at the Fort Garry and we’d get our room and we’d go have Sunday brunch and we’d walk around Osborne Village,” she explains.

“To me, it’s the most romantic city forever and ever. I say that onstage sometimes and people look at me like it’s a joke, and I’m like, ‘Guys, this is not a joke,’” she laughs.

The Good Lovelies will make a stop in Ough’s city of love on Sunday, June 3, at the West End Cultural Centre as they tour across the country supporting their new record, Shapeshifters, which dropped in February.

The title, of course, alludes to change and transformation, something Ough says she and her two bandmates — Caroline Brooks and Sue Passmore — have been facing a lot of since they formed the group more than a decade ago.

“This is the only time we’ve had difficulty fully landing on a title of an album because it was almost too obvious to us. We went through probably 35 ideas before we came back and said, ‘Why are we so resistant to that idea?’ We’re different, we’re older, we’re more seasoned, we’re more willing to… I mean Caroline has two kids and Sue has one baby and I live in St. John’s and I lost my mom a couple years ago and life keeps happening whether or not you’re ready for it,” Ough says.

Shapeshifters not only takes note of the major life changes the women have experienced, it also embraces a change sonically. The Good Lovelies are known for their folk and country compositions, but this time they’ve taken a slight detour, heading down the road of pop instead. Their trademark triple-harmonies and thoughtful songwriting are still present, but everything feels a bit brighter, a bit lighter and totally full of energy and life.

“We weren’t going to try to offend our fans or anything like that, but we weren’t afraid. We were pretty sure they want us to sing something that mattered to us and for the most part, 95 per cent of the people say, ‘This isn’t what I was listening to 10 years ago but I’m enjoying this new sound,’” Ough says.

It was clear early on what direction the songs were taking, so the trio made the decision to continue with the theme of change and head to the East Coast to record there with a new team. Brooks and Passmore live in the Toronto area, Ough in St. John’s, so they all left home to meet up in Halifax in order to work with producer Dan Ledwell (Jenn Grant, Fortunate Ones), who they knew could capture the vibe they wanted.

It was an immersive process; the Good Lovelies would work all day in the studio and then go back to their Airbnb home and hang out (Brooks and Passmore also had their kids there). Their whole life for that period of time was about making music and spending quality time with each other.

“The idea of all being lifted out of our homes into a new zone, to me it’s like going on tour. I’ve never been a fan of the tours where you go out for three hours and come back, I don’t like that. I like the togetherness of, like, everyone gets on a plane, we land in Alaska and spend three weeks together,” Ough says.

And Shapeshifters also added one more Winnipeg connection to the Good Lovelies’ collection — local designer Roberta Landreth created the cover and poster art for the record.

“The three of us are a three-headed monster, but when we agree on stuff, it’s so much fun because we all sort of saw this vision but none of us could execute it, and we wanted to see these colours with this idea and these photos and Roberta, she went through a few rounds but she understood what we wanted and she realized it… she’s just awesome,” Ough says.

It has been three years between Shapeshifters and the Good Lovelies’ previous release, Burn the Plan, but it seems fans likely won’t have to wait that long again for more new music.

“We want to figure out how to not just sit on a record. It took us three years to get from one set of new music to the next set, and that’s not how it is anymore in this industry,” Ough says.

“We want to put out new songs once a month, stuff that we’re into, to honour the fact that people go through music quicker than ever before. And we make it, I don’t want to sit on a song for two or three years, that doesn’t make any sense.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @NireRabel