Joan Shelley has announced a new EP, Mood Ring, which is out October 4 via No Quarter. Today, the Kentucky singer-songwriter has previewed it with the opening title track, which you can hear below.
‘Mood Ring’ was inspired by “the idea that heat and time are interlinked,” according to Shelley. “That they tug and warp each other in space. I had read about block universe theory and it bothered me—if it were true, how do we really change anything? The song wove its own little message in response: this sense that all of us, our web of connections and the friction of our relationships, are the fuel that propels us through time… and that inevitably we are consumed by it. But what a spectacular thing to get a chance to ignite this vast, incomprehensible space with our lives. To have gotten an invitation to be here at all.”
The EP came together after Shelley gave birth to her daughter and moved from the place she was raised in rural Kentucky. The first time she listened to the mixes of the new songs was reportedly on the drive to the new family home in Louisville. “I listened with my daughter on the drive and she wanted ‘I Look After You’ over and over,” Shelley recalled, continuing:
She asked, ‘Is this to me?’ And I said yes, while also knowing that I wrote it before she was born, and that it’s for lovers too, as well as grieving mothers. I looked at her in the rearview mirror as she mouthed the words in her carseat. When we reached the end of our drive I lost service, so I played the songs again off my phone and rolled the windows down, hearing the lyrics again ‘just seven steps… all you need to know for your journey’ and I wished it were that simple.
Shelley released her latest album, The Spur, in 2022.
Mood Ring EP Cover Artwork:
Mood Ring EP Tracklist:
1. Mood Ring
2. Singing To You
3. Fire of the Morning
4. Seven Steps
5. I Look After You
