Last month, Joan Shelley announced plans to release a follow-up to 2019’s Like The River Loves The Sea. Out in June, The Spur is produced by James Elkington and features appearances from Bill Callahan, Meg Baird, British novelist Max Porter, and Shelley’s husband Nathan Salsburg. We’ve already heard the title track, and now Shelley is sharing her Callahan collab called “Amberlit Morning,” which also has an accompanying music video directed by Cyrus Moussavi and Brittany Nugent.
Here’s Shelley’s statement around “Amberlit Morning”:
When I was a child, my father the painter would tell me the Picasso quote: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” He tried to teach me to hold on to that wonder and clear vision, but holding on proved impossible.
As I wrote this song, I watched it take on this theme of beauty and impermanence. I imagined making it a duet that would feel like a conversation between two constellations. I wanted to be sung a mythical bedtime story, one that Bill Callahan might write. So I asked him to write and sing it with me.
Could we capture that stellar perspective? Seeing the world from before we learned the sense of triumph or of tragedy; before we learned what we should be proud of or what we should fear.
Callahan adds:
Joan’s guitar riff instantly sucked me into the world of the song. A world that was ongoing and ending and going on again. She wanted a little help fleshing it out, or just having someone else’s perspective on what she was looking at. I threw in some lines that she called mythical. I tend to see in myths, in dreams. I may have added a chord change, possibly at her request — the beautiful thing about the song for me is that it’s kind of covered its tracks in the snow so now I can’t remember entirely what I added or changed. Maybe that guitar riff is someone covering their tracks in the snow. I can just appreciate the mystery of the thing as a whole. Joan claims the high voice at the end is mine, the high voice covering the tracks of the low. I don’t know if I believe her.
Video co-director Moussavi adds:
Joan shared the song and gave us the prompt “Goodnight Moon,” which led us to George Méliès’ A Trip To The Moon and other early 20th century film and photo renditions of outer space. Brittany and I were also inspired by amateur star-gazing clubs in New York City. There’s a romance to looking up at space from one of the brightest points on earth.
Watch and listen to “Amberlit Morning” below.
The Spur is out 6/24 via No Quarter, and Shelley will have an album release show at Old Town School Of Folk in Chicago on July 24. Pre-order the album here.
