New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Josh Lovelace of the Grammy nominated rock band NEEDTOBREATHE announced his new full-length solo album SHELTERS, due out October 25 via Stonycroft Records / Missing Piece Records. The album is an 11-song suite of original and achingly personal tracks that will resonate with anyone who has ever dealt with loss. Along with the announcement, Lovelace has shared the album's inspiring first single and video "Miracles," a rumination on just how much young minds are able to trust and hope - and an appeal to return to those days. The video for the song premiered with Americana Highways who describe the clip, "Hazy in black and white, with occasional red colored scenes, there are sharp and unfocused areas contrasting as the video (and the song) delve into the imagination and parts of our inner selves. Josh hears broken records wasting our focus, and expresses that universal feeling that we are running out of time within the social noise all around us, and steps out to say: "I want to believe in miracles, I want you to cure the cynical." A voice of reason piercing through the haze.
"As I've gotten older, I don't really believe all the things that I believed when I was young," Lovelace says about his newest track. "But at the same time, I wish I had the confidence that I had when I was a kid. That miracles can and do exist."
From beginning to end, SHELTERS is full of songs that vacillate between self-doubt, angst, and hope. 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 his beliefs, after growing up as the son of a preacher. Through all this turmoil, though, he's had his touchstones, his shelters: loved ones, friends, and, of course, music. " The reason why I call the album 'shelters' instead of just 'shelter' is because there's not a one stop-shop for salvation." Lovelace says. "Different people became shelters for me — and also my work. There's beauty in that."
Like many, Lovelace became more introspective during the pandemic, as he struggled with waning relationships, new anxiety, and all the uncertainty that the time engendered. Working on the album became like therapy. In 2022, he took a solo trip to Roslyn, Washington — where one of his comfort shows, Northern Exposure, was filmed — to finally put those 11 songs down on tape. "It was kind of a watershed thing for me," he says. "I was able to really reckon with some of the things that have happened to me, whether it's my fault or not, and start to deal with those things and not keep them hidden anymore."
SHELTERS follows Lovelace's three-album stretch into family oriented music, under the moniker "Young Folk;" Moonwalking (2022), Growing Up (2019), and Young Folk (2017).
SHELTERS Tracklist:
Better Days
Miracles
High Thrown
Lovelight Flames & Smoke
Not the Best Version of Myself (Right Now)
Praying Wrong
Hole Through My Heart
The Same Things
I Stopped Drinking Yesterday
Soul
