With Colours in Your Mind, The Blues Guy & The SHADES OF BLUE present a modern blues album built around one of the genre’s most enduring strengths: emotional honesty. Guy Renardeau serves as the creative anchor, handling compositions and instrumental performances while bringing together a striking international lineup of vocalists and musicians. The seven-track collection moves through themes of heartbreak, personal struggle, empowerment, ambition and love, but its defining characteristic is the way those themes are presented through different musical personalities. Glenda Benevides, Class Vee, Łukasz “Wiśnia” Wiśniewski, Melody McArthur and KIA Knoester each bring a distinctive perspective, ensuring that no two performances occupy quite the same emotional space. Renardeau’s production keeps these contrasting contributions connected, creating an album that feels unified without becoming predictable.
“Addicted to the Pain” makes an immediate impression through Glenda Benevides’ commanding vocal presence. Her ability to combine blues intensity with soul phrasing gives the opening track a strong emotional authority and establishes the album’s willingness to confront difficult subjects directly. Class Vee’s arrival on “Nonsense” changes the mood considerably, bringing contemporary pop and R&B energy into the record. This is where the album’s modern identity becomes particularly clear. Renardeau is not attempting to place contemporary performers inside a strictly traditional blues framework. Instead, he builds instrumental environments where their individual styles can operate naturally. “Harmonica Blues” takes the project in another direction, with Wiśniewski’s harmonica becoming the defining voice. His experience as a performer, bandleader and harmonica specialist gives the track an unmistakable connection to blues tradition, while Renardeau’s production prevents it from feeling like a historical exercise.
The middle portion of the album expands its emotional range further. “Heartache’s on Me,” with lyrics by Melody McArthur, brings a deeply personal dimension to the project, reinforcing the idea that blues remains most effective when it communicates something lived and felt. “Watch Me Work” then changes the energy again through KIA Knoester’s alternative R&B and soul influence. Her presence adds contemporary sophistication and a sense of self-determination, fitting the album’s wider interest in empowerment and expression. “Beautiful Words,” the second contribution from Class Vee, reinforces the record’s emphasis on personality and vocal character before “Love on My Mind” brings Benevides back for the finale. This sequencing gives the album a strong sense of progression, with each track acting as a new chapter rather than simply another standalone song.
What makes Colours in Your Mind particularly interesting is the ambition behind its musical design. Renardeau’s career across guitar performance, songwriting, production and cinematic composition is reflected in an approach that values atmosphere as much as genre identity. The album does not abandon the blues. Instead, it treats the blues as a foundation from which other sounds can emerge. Rock, jazz, soul, R&B, ambient textures and cinematic ideas become part of the vocabulary, allowing the project to speak to contemporary listeners while retaining an emotional connection to the traditions that inspired it. The result is an engaging collaborative record with a strong production identity and an unusually broad international perspective. Colours in Your Mind ultimately makes its case through versatility, demonstrating that contemporary blues can remain emotionally direct while continuing to evolve.