Video: Joan Shelley – “Amberlit Morning” (ft. Bill Callahan)

Directed by Cyrus Moussavi & Brittany Nugent. From The Spur, out June 24 on No Quarter.

These two sound like they were destined to sing together.

Shelley says, “As I wrote this song, I watched it take on this theme of beauty and impermanence. I imagined making it a duet that would feel like a conversation between two constellations. I wanted to be sung a mythical bedtime story, one that Bill Callahan might write. So I asked him to write and sing it with me.”

Callahan says, “Joan’s guitar riff instantly sucked me into the world of the song. A world that was ongoing and ending and going on again. She wanted a little help fleshing it out, or just having someone else’s perspective on what she was looking at. I threw in some lines that she called mythical. I tend to see in myths, in dreams. I may have added a chord change, possibly at her request — the beautiful thing about the song for me is that it’s kind of covered its tracks in the snow so now I can’t remember entirely what I added or changed. Maybe that guitar riff is someone covering their tracks in the snow. I can just appreciate the mystery of the thing as a whole. Joan claims the high voice at the end is mine, the high voice covering the tracks of the low. I don’t know if I believe her.”

Who knows? Probably doesn’t matter who did what. It’s a beautiful song.