Joakim Daal – Shelter (Spotify)

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Shelter is a timelessly beautiful debut single from Helsinki based Finnish-American Joakim Daal. His music uniquely combines 2020s art pop, folk indie, 60s cool jazz, poetry and a cinematic touch. The effect is crowned by Daal’s classic, soft singing voice.

Shelter sounds like Chet Baker, Kings Of Convenience and Bon Iver came together to craft a late night gem. The fragile yet warmly familiar melodies flow around the pulse of a sophisticatedly off-kilter rhythm.

“Shelter explores the confines of the intimate, sometimes difficult yet expansive world that two people can create with the passing of enough time - where alternately the smallest aggravations can snowball into a barely contained torrent while the most tectonic shifts and difficult events that test the foundations, ultimately solidify this world and perhaps even dissipate.” - offers Daal about his debut single.

Joakim Daal grew up in the suburbs of New York with his Finnish parents. Although he studied jazz and classical music in his youth, he only began to consider creating music of his own after moving to Montréal in the early 2010’s for university. In Montréal, Daal became acquainted with the burgeoning DIY pop community that had grown around the Lab Synthèse art collective. Experiencing the vastly diverse approaches to self-expression explored by various artists, helped Daal break free from his preconceived notions; to experiment with creating his own meaningful spaces and aesthetic experiences. After years of patiently brewing, this inspiration finally takes form in the debut single, Shelter.

Shelter was written, produced and recorded by Daal himself, mixed by Jarno Takkumäki (the artist behind Lac Belot) and mastered by the multiple Grammy Award winning Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone. Calbi and Fallone’s lengthy discography includes classic albums by Taylor Swift, John Lennon, Big Thief, Bon Iver, Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen. The drums feature The Holy band's Eero Jääskeläinen while the layered woodwinds were performed by the saxophonist, Jussi Hurskainen.