Shovels & Rope are happy to be breaking some new ground on their fifth studio album By Blood, whose tracks "Mississippi Nuthin'" and "Carry Me Home" are premiering exclusively below.
The South Carolina husband-wife duo made the 10-track set, out April 12 via Dualtone, in their Charleston home studio. But for starters, they went in a bit more prepared than on its predecessors. "We were able to make this record between tour stops, so we had the chance to work out the music on tour a little bit and get it into the studio after it had some exercise," Cary Ann Hearst tells Billboard. "A lot of times in the past we'd written songs and got them on a record before they ever got workshopped in a live setting, so it really helped to get them in shape." There was also a bit more adventure during the sessions, as Michael Trent added more bass to the mix, along with mellotron and 12-string guitar and even dropped amplifiers on the floor to get a different crashing sound than cymbals.
"We're only the two of us, and we try to make things sound interesting and are always looking for inspiration and a different way to do things," Trent says. "So we tried a lot of different things this time, which was fun."