Joan Shelley announces new record with mellow single "Cycle"

"Cycle" arrives after last month's "Coming Down For You", which was Shelley's first single in two years, after her 2017 self-titled album produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.

Shelley's new album Like the River Loves the Sea was recorded at Greenhaus Studios in Reykjavik, and is co-produced by Shelley and James Elkington.

Elkington and Nathan Salsburg provided instrumentals, while Icelandic sisters Þórdís Gerður Jónsdóttir and Sigrún Kristbjörg Jónsdóttir contributed strings.

Speaking about the new record, Shelley explains, "Woven into the melodies and rhythms of these songs are fragments of the many musical traditions that comprise what we now call Kentucky music: Irish, British, and African to name a few. The best music would be a conversation with the divine that has seen all of it, or with the oldest trees that have witnessed the whole human story. These songs are partly that conversation, at times through the lens of lovers. They are also a longing cry born of all the dividing; a call across the slowly spreading ocean. Primarily, Like the River Loves the Sea is built as a haven for overstimulated heads in uncertain times. The title (which comes from a song by Si Kahn) speaks of the inevitable and at times indifferent nature of love. Whether it be a physical place or an idea, everyone needs a place of comfort. One where we can look out again from that place of calm and see how to best act and to be in an uncertain world."

Tracklist:

1. Haven
2. Coming Down For You
3. Teal
4. Cycle
5. When What It Is
6. The Fading
7. The Sway
8. Awake
9. Stay All Night
10. Tell Me Something
11. High On The Mountain
12. Any Day Now