Album Review: Shovels and Rope

By Aaron Davis (for JHWeekly.com)O’ Be Joyful Shovels and Rope ****Not since the everybodyfields has there been a country-folk female/male blend like Shovels and Rope that sums more than just solid harmony singing and introspective songwriting. It’s all about character and color, and a lyrically panoramic edge to the collaborative writing.There’s subtle, even unintended impreciseness that makes this recording real and rootsy, back porchy, and true to the duo’s live instrumentation. Then I found out it was recorded in the twosome’s house, backyard and van, and it all made sense. Meet husband-and-wife duo Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, stirring a racket with two old guitars, a handful of harmonicas, occasional keyboard, and a junkyard drum kit harvested from an actual garbage heap. O’ Be Joyful sidesteps the murder balladry of its 2008 debut in favor of energetic folk-blues duets that blends Southern-bred, whiskey-throated X and Y chromosomes like a coveted batch of your grand pappy’s shine. Impressionable tracks: “Birmingham,” “Cavalier,” and “O’ Be Joyful.”