“I feel like I’m reinventing myself on this album,”

Josh Kelley says of New Lane Road, his first new release in five years and his first for Sugar Hill.

Indeed, listeners who think they know Josh Kelley via such trademark tunes as his pop smash “Amazing” and his country hit “Georgia Clay” may be in for a surprise with New Lane Road. With Kelley handling the songwriting, production and engineering, and playing most of the instruments himself, the TK-song album is a landmark for the artist in more ways than one, breaking new sonic ground while featuring the most revealing, personally-charged lyrics of his dozen-year career.

“This record is the most me of any record I’ve ever made,”

Kelley asserts. “It’s the most honest I’ve ever been, and it’s the best subject matter I’ve ever had to write about. When I was first coming up, I was young and inexperienced, and I had to make things up. Now that I’m older and I’ve traveled the world and had kids and have seen more and felt more, I have things to write songs about.”

Indeed, such effortlessly catchy, lyrically engaging new tunes as “Take It On Back,” “You’re My Angel,” “Life’s Too Short,” “It’s Your Move” and “One Foot in the Grave” demonstrate a remarkable balance of emotional insight and melodic craft. New Lane Road also includes Kelley’s distinctively rootsy reworking of the Bruce Hornsby classic “Mandolin Rain,” which sold 100,000 downloads when it was originally released as a digital single in 2014.

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