SHELLEY, JOAN
OVER AND EVEN (NO QUARTER)
Joan Shelley quickly follows her acclaimed 2014 album Electric Ursa with Over and Even, a quieter, more contemplative set recorded in a farmhouse in her home state of Kentucky.
The New York Times said "her music is folky and pastoral, with a sense of scale that makes her humble about her place in mankind and the universe, and her songs are serene but never complacent." Over and Even is her third record.
All the people who played on Joan's new record - and Daniel Martin Moore who recorded and engineered it - are friends.
That comes through somehow in the sound of the album. Will Oldham and Glen Dentinger are genius harmony singers.
They leave the perfect amount of space for microscopic shifts in Joan's voice, without sacrificing their own awesome idiosyncrasies.
Nathan Salsburg's guitar follows every twist of the melody. When the song breaks your heart in two, Nathan is there with a high E-string to sew it back together.
Joan Shelley's voice flows out like a river. It never travels in a straight line. It follows bends and curves carved by history.