The full-length Shelters album drops this fall
Needtobreathe keyboardist Josh Lovelace will release his new full-length solo album Shelters on October 25th 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 how much young minds can trust and hope — and an appeal to return to those days.
“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 adds. “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 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 — 2017’s Young Folk, 2019’s Growing Up, and 2022’s Moonwalking.
- 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
