With apologies to their home-town festival name, this will be a “high water mark” year for the duo Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent aka Shovels & Rope. By Blood is their fourth studio release for the couple and parents, who are now expecting their second child. As if a new touring schedule behind this album weren’t enough, this is the third year the duo will curate the annual High Water Festival in Charleston, SC, this weekend, in fact. In addition, 2019 will see the release of an illustrated children’s book based on the standout track, “C’mon Utah” of this disc. Additionally, they will release the film Shovels & Rope: The Movie.
So, you want to know about the album first, right? Space permitting, we may circle back to the other projects. As you’ve come to expect, the duo writes their usual honest, literate and narrative lyrics, this time perhaps with more intense personal themes. Michael Trent again produced with all instruments outside of a fiddle on “Hammer” and horns on “Twisted Sisters played by Trent and Hearst. These ten songs are short sketches that focus on vulnerable human characters who strive for greatness by eventually succumb to their shortcomings. These are inherently good people whose limitations are plainly seen, subjects that listeners and the songwriters can identity with. Meanwhile, the backing music, often cinematic in scope, can range for gritty and thrashing to ethereal and provocative. It’s amazing what the duo can produce in the comfort of their home studio.
The first single “The Wire” signals the thematic current as it’s about accepting your own faults and learning to say you’re sorry. The chorus evokes the fir-group sound and innocent days of rock n’ roll. The pulsating “I’m Comin Out” opens, a song with more than just the obvious subtext, it centers on a baby about to emerge, and showing up for the revolution with “the taste of blood in my mouth.” “Blood” is again mentioned in the title track but in both instances, they are messaging their young daughter about the strength of family. “Carry Me Home,” lyrics included in the inside, alludes to the vulnerability and fragility of a loving relationship. This litany of lyric toward the end is as emblematic about their songwriting approach as any – “Fell for the same old tricks/Fell for the lie/Fell from grace/Fell far behind/Fell out of time/Fell outta place falling backwards/Fell over/Fell off the face of earth/Fell in a bucket of luck arms flailing free falling face first but at night we were free…”
To change it up just a bit, they put their stamp on the modern murder ballad in “Pretty Polly.” The central track, though, given the book project, is “C’mon Utah.” It’s an imaginative, inspirational story set in the future after Trump’s proverbial wall has been built and later destroyed. Separated and displaced families begin to figure out how to re-build their lives by organizing communities. Parents in these communities bolster children’s spirits by reading and telling stories, one of which is about a magic horse named Utah who has the power to reunite them with their families on the other side of the destruction. The song and subsequent book are designed as a conversation starter for parents and children to discuss immigration and diversity.
In just a short time, Shovels & Rope have become one of our most important bands. This recording and their projects in 2019 promise to lift them higher to even another level.
