For those unaware, Josh Lovelace is a proud work in progress: whether it’s quitting drinking to be more present for his kids, quelling panic attacks before stepping on stage, or just figuring out what he believes after a childhood of being told that there’s only one way to pray.

Through all this turmoil, though, he’s had his touchstones, his shelters: loved ones, friends, and, of course, music.

“Writing has always been something that feels like a best friend in some ways; I’m able to lean on that any time,” Lovelace says. “I’ve never felt like I was ready to share where I am. Who I am at this moment feels like the right time to let all that out.”

And let it all out he does on landmark album Shelters, an 11-song suite of achingly personal tracks that ping-pong with alacrity between self-doubt, angst, and a stunning kind of hope. An album close to the heart that’s also deeply, deeply relatable to anyone who’s ever felt lost, Lovelace’s solo effort drops on October 25th, 2024.

1. Better Days
2. Miracles
3. High Throne
4. Lovelight
5. Flames & Smoke
6. Not The Best Version Of Myself (Right Now)
7. Praying Wrong
8. Hole Through My Heart
9. The Same Things
10. I Stopped Drinking Yesterday
11. Soul

This dutifully hued, wholly impassioned new recording (and now my own personal favorite of 2024) opens on an aching, dulcet yearn found driving Better Days and then turns things up on the free flowing, sunny smile of Miracles, the slightly sterner, yet no less melodious High Throne, the beautifully rhythmic, soulful mid-tempo rocker Lovelight (a song that you can hear Taylor Swift singing as her own), and then we get the all-embracing sounds of Flames & Smoke.

Along next is the low slung, self-confessional Not The Best Version Of Myself (Right Now) and that is in turn backed by the harmonically driven Praying Wrong and they are in turn followed seamlessly by the emboldened Hole Through My Heart, the atmospherically-charged The Same Things, the album rounding out on the encircling warmth of I Stopped Drinking Yesterday, closing on the emotional balladry within Soul.

“Growing up as a preacher’s kid, we were taught that an invisible force in the sky was the ultimate shelter when things get rough. But as I got older, I started seeing holes in the foundation,” Lovelace says. “And so the reason why I call the album ‘shelters’ instead of just ‘shelter’ is because there’s not a one stop-shop for salvation. Different people became shelters for me — and also my work. There’s beauty in that.”

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