Shovels & Rope return with the new studio album Manticore on Dualtone Music February 18, 2022. The duo featuring Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst today shared the LP’s lead single and opening track, “Domino.”
Trent and Hearst initially conceived Manticore as a barebones, acoustic-focused effort. The pair wrote the record’s 10 tracks before the pandemic but used the extra time afforded by the unplanned break from the road to more fully flesh out the material. “Manticore is a more intimate album speaking to the human experience, some of it deeply personal,” according to a press release heralding the forthcoming LP.
“It’s not heavy metal, but in our guts, it feels a bit like Heavy Metal,” Michael Trent said of Manticore. Shovels & Rope worked up the songs on the LP at Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Decatur St. house in New Orleans and then recorded the album at The Whip, the pair’s home studio in Johns Island, South Carolina while locked down. “I was grateful to have something to work on, to go into the shop every day for a few hours, get into something, exercise parts of my brain and feel excited about something when there really wasn’t a whole lot to feel excited about at the time,” added Trent.
“Domino” examines the tale of actor James Dean’s death and the legacy he left behind. “The song serves as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on how we look at celebrity in our country,” as per a press release.
Watch Shovels & Rope’s “Domino” lyric video below:
