THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “One night in the middle of the night there were a series of noises coming from above which lead to a series of thoughts,” say Shovels And Rope, the husband-and-wife duo of Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst. “It sounded like something was working. Building something. A nest for its family? A trap for its prey? This led to more thoughts about unseen things at work. A God? A voice in your head? It all feels kind of made up until someone responds to it.
“Less means more. That’s kind of always how it’s been with us. This time the rules were simple: we can only use what we work with live and whatever we put down on tape must be accomplishable on a stage in a live setting. That’s always seemed to be when we’re at our best. Or most twitchy. Many times we’ve made records that we loved and then, after figuring out how we’d perform it live, we end up falling in love with the live arrangement because being a two-piece band, it took some real risk and struggle which led to innovation which gave it a whole new life. (Consider the tortured grape.) So with this one we just started there and worked backwards. The result encapsulates, more than anything we’ve done before, the sound of our live performance. Resulting in what one might consider by definition, a definitive album.”
