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Joan Shelley carefully calibrates the particular resonances, timbres, and tempos of her music to slow her listeners’ heartbeats and ease their fears. Her songs function as lullabies, calming anxieties about the transition between consciousness and unconsciousness, despair and connection. In the song “Teal,” from her new album, Like the River to the Sea, she expresses her intent to “tear apart summer’s stuffy and stale rooms” to let in “fresh air, wind, and waves.” Her voice is close, pure in tone. It merges seamlessly with her musical partner, guitarist Nathan Salsburg.

Shelley grew up in Kentucky, and there’s a deep undercurrent of old Appalachian music, but the album feels ethereal and unmoored to place. It was recorded in Iceland with producer Jim Elkington and features guest vocals from Bonnie “Prince” Billy (singer-songwriter Will Oldham) on two songs.

Shelley and her band—Salsburg, violinist Anna Krippenstapel, drummer Nathan Bowles, and bassist Jake Xerxes Fussell (who also played an opening solo set)—performed at the arts-friendly Park Church Co-op in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Joan Shelley at soundcheck

Nathan Salsburg and Shelley

Nathan Bowles

Taking a moment to rest before the show

Jake Fussell performing a solo opening set

Cutting a lemon for tea

Set list

Salsburg packing up his guitar after the show

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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