MUSIC

Smokey & the Feeelings (2018)

Edmonton, AB

In a way, Nickelas “Smokey” Johnson is the embodiment of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”—foreboding, existentialist, and grimly pastoral. Often starting songs with conventional country twang before descending into all-out carnivalesque madness, Smokey & the Feeelings make melancholy and malaise a prairie staple.