Singer-songwriter Joan Shelley has announced that her latest record, “Real Warmth”, will be released on 19th September 2025 via No Quarter. “Real Warmth” is the follow-up to Shelley’s 2022 album “The Spur”, for which the pandemic had kept her close to home in Kentucky. As her latest batch of songs began to take shape in late 2024—and as Shelley and her family began settling into their new home in Michigan—she began searching for a place where she could record in the company of talented friends.
This led her to Ben Whiteley, bassist for The Weather Station and Jake Xerxes Fussell, who engineered the winter sessions that became “Real Warmth” at Casa Wroxton in Toronto. Whiteley says: “We had a few windows in mid-winter and it really felt like there was an urgency to capture a moment in time with these songs, performances, people involved, and against the political backdrop. The record really feels like a capture instead of a meticulous construction. Part of Joan’s concept was not only to go to a place but to draw on the community of musicians from that place.”
Those community musicians include drummer Philippe Melanson, saxophonist Karen Ng, singer/songwriters Doug Paisley and Tamara Lindeman, Matt Kelley, and Ken Whiteley. Joan’s partner, guitarist Nathan Salsburg, also appears. Toronto artist Heather Goodchild designed and painted the cover and inner sleeve.
Pre-order details can be found via this link.
Shelley has offered three mutually inclusive readings of the album’s title: the warmth of actual bodies, a spiritual, humane warmth and the real warmth of the planet and the urgency of our moment.
The first single ‘Everybody’ encompasses the first of those themes, and you can listen to it below.
