CD Odyssey Disc 1652: Joan Shelley

My health kick seems to be sticking, and I went for another run today, my fifth in the past eight days. So far the old bones and what’s left of my tendons and connective tissue seem to be holding up. More importantly, I feel a lot calmer and generally at ease.

If you want to feel calm and at ease this next record would be a strong choice.

Disc 1652 is…The Spur

Artist: Joan Shelley

Year of Release: 2022

What’s up with the Cover?  Joan Shelley’s not-so-giant head is wrapped up in some kind of fabric. Maybe a scarf? This cover has a peaceful diffuse feeling to it that I find restful, much like I find the music.

How I Came To Know It: I was a Joan Shelley fan dating back five or six years now. This was just me giving her latest album a listen.

How It Stacks Up: I have seven Joan Shelley albums. This one is so good it bumped my two previous four-star reviews (ranked 2 and 3 at the time) down a notch each, taking over second place in the process. Does this mean that there is another Joan Shelley album out there better even than this? I hold out hope there is, but if not, I shall be just as content.

Rating: 5 stars

Imagine the grace of sitting somewhere in dappled sunlight, looking out at some magnificent natural scene, with a light summer wind blowing the branches around you. Nothing can match that, but Joan Shelley comes close.

“The Spur” is Shelley’s ninth record and like a fine red wine, she just gets better with age. I wanted to say a fine scotch, but there is a lighthearted refinement to Shelley that speaks more to sun-kissed vineyards, and less the heavy peat of hard liquor.

It all starts with Shelley’s voice. Impossibly high but never flighty, there are few that match its organic yet ethereal magic. Maybe Alela Diane, but that’s about it. Otherwise, she is in a field all her own. Better yet, she knows just how to use that voice, lilting lightly across the top of melodies, so weightless you can imagine her dancing across the tops of treetops, barely bending the branches with her passing.

Add to this incredible instrument some first-rate guitar playing from both Shelley and husband Nathan Salsburg and you start to approach the divine. I can never tell who is playing which part when they play together, but I rarely care. It is sublime.

The production on “The Spur” is thicker and richer than much of her earlier work. Often this causes me to detach from the bones of a song, but here all the extra bits – the cut of the cello, the gentle touches of brass – all converge just right. The effect helps lift you into a wakeful reverie akin to a lucid dream.

Many songs captured my attention. Both “Forever Blues” and the title track feature all of what is best on the record (see above) and right when you can’t get enough of all those high head voices, Shelley drops “Home” on you. “Home” is a song that captures in both music and lyrics that insistent, rising excitement of what it feels like to come back to a place you’ve left years ago. Is it still yours? The building lyrics ask that question without an easy answer:

“Home
I left home
Moonlit home
To lose its sound and tone
Overgrown”

Something stirs in your heart when you hear this song, capturing the loss of leaving, the excitement of returning and the uncertainty of all the spaces in between. And despite all the unknowns, Shelley’s vocals wrap you in a blanket of clouds and let you know wherever you are, it is a safe place for emotional discovery.

On “Like the Thunder” the journey is full of the same restless energy, but this time with a burning desire. This song threatens to topple over, but the electric guitar holds you at that place on the edge of abandon while blue notes reverberate diffusely across the empty spaces in the melody.

As if she hadn’t won me over enough already, on “When the Light is Dying” Shelley even quotes Leonard Cohen. And not classic Cohen either, but “You Want it Darker” Cohen. Like me, Shelley’s stuck with the poet into his old age.

Whatever is going on here, the combination of Shelley’s vocal talent, the musicianship, the production and the songwriting all come together in a way that will bring peace to even the most troubled soul. My only regret is that I somehow overlooked this record on my Best of 2022. I recant.

Best tracks: All tracks but some favourites are: Forever Blues, The Spur, Home, Like the Thunder, When the Light is Dying, Fawn, Why Not Live Here, Between Rock and Sky (that’s 8 of the 12 available and the other 4 are also good)

CD Odyssey Disc 1399: Joan Shelley

Yeehaw! Boston Bruins through to Round Two of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Once again the hero was Patrice Bergeron who has ascended to a tie with Bobby Orr as my favourite hockey player of all time.

Anyway, there are still three gruelling rounds to go, but here’s hoping we end up winning one more game than we won last year.

Disc 1399 is…. Rivers & Vessels

Artist: Joan Shelley

Year of Release: 2018

What’s up with the Cover? I think it is Joan Shelley, if she were mostly composed of a collage of photos of rivers. This looks OK, with the exception of that Phantom of the Opera situation going on with her face.  

How I Came To Know It: I’m a big fan of Joan Shelley so I’m always hungry for new music from her. I discovered this record while poking around her Bandcamp page. It is only available via download, so when I finally worked up the nerve to download music for the first time, this one ended up on my order list.

How It Stacks Up: I have five Joan Shelley albums (with two more on my wishlist). “Rivers & Vessels” is really just a six-song EP, but I’m counting it anyway. It comes in at number three.

Ratings: 4 stars

Listening to Joan Shelley sing is like lying down in a mountain glade; feeling peaceful and elevated at the same time. Her tone is sweet and rich like syrup, and yet retains its power even when she’s landing notes up so high they leave many singers gasping for air.

On “Rivers & Vessels” her voice takes centre-stage even more than usual. The songs are stripped down and rustic and speak of a simpler time when you could just sit on a porch and trade songs with the neighbours.

Shelley takes that notion to heart, with four of the six songs featuring other indie folk artists, including Doug Paisley and Bonnie Prince Billy (both noted because I have other albums by them). In each case, Shelley blends her vocals beautifully in with theirs, following that grand old bluegrass tradition where no one upstages anyone else. I’m particularly fond of her work with Julia Purcell on “Magnolia.” The song’s structure matches its title in both form and lyrics; a beautiful memory that opens like a flower.

Less pleasant, but equally engaging is the dark and foreboding, “The Bridge” featuring Bonny Prince Billy (who also employs Shelley on his records). he song is about a woman returning to a bridge that was once a place of happiness in her life. Now, pregnant and abandoned she opts to leap to her death. The song leaves you hanging with an abrupt:

"My feet are moving slowly and they’re closer to the edge
Here’s where I started, and here’s where I’ll end it”

As the song abruptly cuts off, it leaves you to imagine the tragic fall that follows.

The musicianship is also excellent, particularly the guitar picking on “Pretty Little Miss.” The guitar work is provided by both Shelley and Nathan Salsburg but I don’t know who does the heavy lifting here. Whoever it is nails it.

The album ends with “Silver Whistle” a traditional Jacobite tune about the return of the Bonnie Prince to Scotland (Charlie is the Bonnie Prince this time, not Billy). Like a lot of great Jacobite tunes it is a combination of mournful and defiant. Most of the music on the EP is Americana folk or bluegrass, and this last-minute switch to Gaelic folk music could have landed oddly. Instead, Shelley’s voice instantly transports you to the misty shores of Scotland. The tune is one of hope and mystery, as the singer waits anxiously for the King to set foot back home again (spoiler alert – it doesn’t go well for him). The tune lands much more successfully,

And then, less than twenty minutes in the album is over, doing exactly what a good album should – leaving you wanting more.

Best tracks: Time Has Told Me, Magnolia, Pretty Little Miss, Silver Whistle

CD Odyssey Disc 1334: Joan Shelley

I feel like I’ve just had a weekend that was too fun and that went too fast. There are worse weekends to have.

Disc 1334 is… Like the River Loves the Sea

Artist: Joan Shelley

Year of Release: 2019

What’s up with the Cover? An idyllic view somewhere. My guess is that this is the sea, but it could just as easily be a large river, which makes sense given the album title.

How I Came to Know It: I’ve been a fan of Joan Shelley since her 2017 self-titled effort, so when this one came out I was excited to hear it.

How It Stacks Up:  I have four Joan Shelley albums. They are all good, making competition tough, but I’ll put this one in at #2.

Ratings: 4 stars

I was disinclined to like this record, mostly because I thought the critics were fawning over it a bit too much. I’m contrary like that, which is fine when you’re trying to sniff out a snake-oil salesman, but not terribly valuable when exploring music. Fortunately, when I saw her album sitting on a shelf in a Portland record store, I forgot all the bullshit of my internal monologue and remembered how much I liked her.

Joan Shelley sings folk songs that float by you like morning mist, giving you the feeling of comfort and chill in the same moment. There are no rough edges here, but there is plenty of hard turns and steep cliffs. Shelley doesn’t jump off the latter, but she’s not afraid to take a long and solemn look down them either.

These are songs that tell their stories from the inside out, where everything is seen first from the core of the character Shelley sings from, encouraging you to slowly piece the outer world together from there, one image at a time.

To pull this off you need one hell of a voice, and Joan Shelley has that covered and then some. She’s no belter, and she’s not interested in crazy vocal runs either. She instead relies on a high sweet head-voice that is so pure it feels like she’s made of mist herself. There is something very traditional in her delivery, and I sometimes felt like I was staring into the Outer Hebrides listening to some Gaelic girl charm the see. However, at her heart she’s an Americana girl from Kentucky, and a bit of homespun country sway comes across in just the right measure.

I was so happy to just hear Shelley sing it took a bit longer than usual for me to start focusing on what she had to say. The music had enough emotional import on its own, with very simple production played with a slight echo that adds a soft-edged mystery.

Once I began paying closer attention the album became exponentially more appealing. A lot of these songs are about relationships, but these aren’t songs of high school romance. These are songs about complex relationships going right, going wrong, and sometimes just going straight to bed for a tumble. Shelley launches right in with well crafted lines from the very open, and lets the story unfurl from there. From the careless words we speak and then regret in “Teal”…

“Shock of teal blue

Beneath clouds gathering

And a line of emptied black

On the waves at the horizon

Like a glimpse into cold, dark space

Where I go when I’ve been short with you”

…to the worldly wisdom of “When What It Is” where a romantic offer is also an existential broadside, rocking speaker and listener alike:

“When what it is that makes you want me

No longer is what makes you cry

Then you can come and you can call me

Then you can take me to your side

“I’ve watched you fade and slip and falter

I’ve seen you bold, I’ve seen you weak

And I have wanted more than offered

I see the devil in my needs.”

For all this desolation and uncertainty, other parts of “Like the River…” can be both touching and sexy. “The Sway”, “Stay All Night” and “Tell Me Something” are all songs of seductive power, with Shelley inviting her lover to take charge and win her all over again. As she sings on “Tell Me Something”:

“So take me to the bed

Shake me to my knees

Where I can find a piece of you

You can have a piece of me.”

Whether she’s turning her lover on, or telling them off, Shelley is always raw and uncomfortably present in the moment. She sings hard truths, but her honey-pure vocals make it easy to hear and absorb.  

In the end, I was glad that this record took a while to sink in. It wasn’t until the third listen that it had me enspelled, at which point knew I’d be delaying this review just so I could give it a couple more listens. That might’ve delayed you hearing about it sooner, dear reader, but I hope you’ll indulge me these simple pleasures. You’re hear now, aren’t you?

Best tracks: Teal, When What It Is, The Fading, The Sway, Tell Me Something, Any Day Now