GENRE: Folk/Country
LABEL: No Quarter
REVIEWED: 22nd September, 2025
Rating: 7.6/10
Joan Shelley’s Real Warmth feels like a generous country house filled with unexpected guests. Across thirteen tracks she loosens the strictures of her earlier, hushed folk and lets a wider band of instruments and voices reshape her songs. The record was tracked quickly in Toronto with Canadian collaborators and produced by Ben Whiteley, and that urgency — a “capture” rather than meticulous construction — is audible in the loose, communal performances.
Shelley still centers the songs with her plainspoken, luminous voice, but arrangements add Wurlitzer, saxophone, pedal steel and warm organ lines that broaden the emotional palette. Tracks such as “Everybody” and “Here in the High and Low” trade intimate consolation for sharper observations; “The Orchard” in particular channels righteous anger amid elegiac music.
Lyrically the album moves between domestic tenderness — small, particular scenes of parenting and home and the weight of the outside world: climate anxieties, communal responsibilities, and political unease. Those tensions give the record its moral thrust, turning softness into a form of resilience rather than retreat.
Released September 19 on No Quarter, Real Warmth features guest turns from Tamara Lindeman, Doug Paisley and Nathan Salsburg, which help the songs feel like conversations rather than solitary statements. The sequencing keeps momentum without rush; quieter tracks provide room for reflection while more rhythmic moments push the record forward. It’s an album that rewards repeated listening.
Real Warmth’s strength is its humility: Shelley invites collaborators without surrendering authorship, and the production favors human imperfection over polish. The result is an album that comforts without numbing, a set of songs that feel lived-in and urgent at once. At its best it proves Shelley can expand her sound while deepening the compassion at the core of her music — warm, clear, and quietly fierce. turn0search9
