ON LAST YEAR’S Over and Even, Joan Shelley stitches together a vivid patchwork of distant memories and melancholy daydreams, of anger, longing, and loneliness, and love both poisonous and understated.
Intertwined with these deeply human emotions are fragments of the natural world: falling leaves and glowing stars, singing birds and rotten fruit, the smell of split wood, a patch of grass bent and warm from the weight of a human body.
For Shelley, a rising folk singer from Louisville, Kentucky, the art of songwriting and a keen awareness of the surrounding world go hand in hand.
“It’s something I’ve worked on as a practice for just enjoying this life. It’s something that amplifies my experience of the world: ‘What kind of tree is that?’ and ‘What kind of clouds are those?’ and ‘What does that mean about the way the world is changing around me?'” she asks. “I just like learning the names and appreciating those things because if I forget to do that, I go through the days and don’t remember them. They mean less to me.”
Shelley finds herself edging toward a sort of woo-woo new-age sentiment, before pausing to clarify: “It’s not that I feel a totally hippie inclination. It’s just a universal experience. The stars have been our thing forever.”