Joan Shelley - Like The River Loves The Sea

The fifth solo album from Joan Shelley, the Kentucky folk singer-songwriter, arrives with the promise of sanctuary. Like the River Loves the Sea is a 12-track dispatch from a carefully cultivated microclimate in which the worlds of nature and love coexist and co-depend, each offered a fighting chance to blossom away from the persistent clamor of the everyday. On paper, perhaps, it reads like a retreat. (Shelley calls it “a haven for overstimulated heads in uncertain times.”) In practice, it sounds like a bolstering of defenses—strong and unapologetic.