Connor Kelly & the Time Warp will be performing this Saturday, March 4 at Knoxville’s Preservation Pub downtown. Before the show, let’s take a look at their work in the studio thus far. Progress made, lessons learned and a whole lotta red could catapult this group from Rocky Top to Hollywood in no time at all.

Connor Kelly & the Time Warp is a Tennessee based rock and roll band that’s been making strides in the direction of their Nashville neighbors and 70s influence almost effortlessly and simultaneously for the better part of a year now. Their first record, “Informal Conversations,” sported 12 tracks covering beach-inspired soundscapes with lyricism reminiscent of an early 2000s pop rock group coming out of the west coast. While structurally sound, well paced and sonically admissible, the record never seems to flesh itself into the reverb-wielding monster that breaks loose from its chains this time around. Vision was clearly not what the group was lacking, it was time. After four years, lots of questions and a new feeling of anticipatory trepidation gifted by an overarching scarlet flooded aesthetic, time has shown to be nothing short of gracious to a group who so desperately needed it.

“Distant Forest” spares little time letting you know what the extremities of its tone are about to be, with its opening title track grabbing you by the collar and yanking you into that ocean of scarlet Kelly and Co. have spent the past four years traversing and mapping. Reverb echoes to drag out strokes of curious exploration throughout the track as Kelly backs it up with screeches and wails only available to those who reach for them from the literal bowels of hell. Kelly gives his listener time to return to the surface, but only from the neck up. “Flying Cars” returns to his previous songwriting normalcy while still boasting clear growth both as a poet and as a man. We’ve seen Kelly show prowess with the pen before, but the page is being attacked with something that knows what it’s seeing much clearer this time around. What were once the confusions of youth have now budded into a satisfaction in imperfections and a perspective of authenticity only available to those who yearn for it.

The strangest and most refreshing aspect about Kelly’s new dominion is how little it seems to be affected by time. The record feels like something that could see the light of day whether released in 1970 or 2070. In an era of music that either feels too ready for the future or too scared to leave the past, having something as indulgent in its roots while still managing to sound progressive in its own regard is wildly invigorating. The product we’re given isn’t something that feels entirely foreign, yet its Zappa-esque guitar licks and post-acid Beatles lyricism are now coated in reverb and given room to float in a pool of echo and sonics that all seem to bleed into one another. The record almost acts as a pond in which multiple streams, the individual tracks and sounds, are ever flowing into and out of the greater body of water. Nothing feels misplaced despite the drastic ebbs and flows this record takes from track to track, a credit to the production as well as Kelly’s ear.

Earlier I stated that artistic direction was not on top of the grocery list for Kelly this time around as much as it was time. Funnily enough, that need seems to fade into irrelevance the longer one spends with this record. What presents itself is a showcase of speculation and uncertainty that comes as a tax of late adolescence, but it’s that awareness that solidifies the notion that everything is exactly the way it needs to be. Nuance and a refined set of tools have allowed the Time Warp to hop in the Delorean in an effort to perpetuate the conversation on time, through time. Maybe the concept isn’t as linear as previously imagined, or maybe it’s just not as rigid as we like to make it out to be. For Kelly, it’s not a dwindling currency as much as it is a facet for development. The notion he presents is a satisfactory observation that time is hard to come by but even harder to waste, at least as long as something is learned along the way.