Joan Shelley :: “Mood Ring” - No Quarter
While a slow burning fire stretches its flickering fingers towards the translucent tree tops in some rare reversal, the ancient stars of solar sorcery above blink like that of a million eyes all eager to not miss a single moment of something truly divine taking place just below on the mortal marble of planet earth. Both transcendental in its captivating compositions and simplistic in its atmospheric arrival into spiritualistic solace, Louisville, KY-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Joan Shelley, delivers yet another iconic and immaculate installment in her radiating repertoire with the breathtaking, holy hums of her most recent effort entitled “Mood Ring”. An explosive exploration of melodic mediation, Shelley has sincerely captured the electrifying essence of story-telling and the repeating ritual of mastery in her craft throughout a truly captivating career that spans well over a decade with subliminal releases such as “Over and Even”, “S/T” and 2022’s groundbreaking album “The Spur”. Kentucky is, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating and devilishly inspiring places from which music has come from. With the likes of Nathan Salsburg (Shelley’s husband), Bonnie Prince Billy, and Ryan Davis, to name a few, all bringing together the reassuring magic of sound and the collective community of independent artists.
Having first locked in with the Philly-based label, No Quarter, for the release of 2014’s “Electric Ursa”, Shelley has since been on a soothing quest of elemental vocabulary and the calculated conjuring of sensation through song and the personality of prose. “Mood Ring” combines the narrative of nature, family, motherhood and the long-lost tantalizing fragrances of hope, while effortlessly capturing the alarming essences of empathy achieved on each and every track as she implores for the safety of all lives as we continue to move further towards the comical darkness of life and its existential blissed out earthly epilogue.
Recorded at the End of an Ear in Louisville, KY and set for release on No Quarter in the first week of October, Shelley was joined by the forces of James Elkington, Nathan Salsburg, Julia Purcell, Lou Krippenstapel and Jim Marlowe to help elevate the energy of the gospel that the album ultimately achieves by bringing its listeners into the altitude of angelic harmony and latitude of literacy across its five track landscape of roadless valleys all simultaneously venting the transparencies of life. While the bewilderment of reality throws us into a disastrous tailspin, Shelley counteracts this paralyzing phenomenon by admirably displaying the musical mosaic of sympathy, speech and social serenity for all to hear, see and feel in the epic ethos of one of the contemporary greats of our time.
