Joan Shelley

This twelve song set is a profound meditation on light and darkness, run through with a heaving heart and lifted with an infectious optimism.

Recorded in the spring of 2021 at Earthwave Farm in the Kentucky countryside, James Elkington served as co-producer (alongside Shelley) and the album features collaborations with Bill Callahan, Meg Baird and the British novelist Max Porter along with Shelley’s musical partner and husband Nathan Salsburg. Shelley says: “The Spur” is the result of a period of opposite extremes: of intellectual hyper-connection and physical isolation. This album will forever be fused with the memory of our marriage, the birth of our child, and the intense joy despite the darkness”. "The Kentucky singer-songwriter has come to fully master a sense of radiant calm." - NPR Music "Her poetic imagery is dazzling" - The Guardian