This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Fresh off their last tour, Shovels and Rope, who play The Depot Thursday night, hunkered down and recorded "Little Seeds," an album that Michael Trent, one half of the South Carolina husband-and-wife duo, has said was about new beginnings.

It was appropriate, since it came as Trent and songwriting partner Cary Ann Hearst were getting used to parenthood and raising a newborn baby. They also had Trent's parents living with him as his father was in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

"I feel like we had this very intense feeling of just life in general," Trent said recently on an interview with NPR's World Cafe. "Beginnings of things and it was kind of the endings of things and it was the beginnings of endings of things."

The cycle is apparent on poignant songs like "St. Anne's Parade," a tale of the annual celebration in New Orleans of life and death, inspired by friends who were married at the parade.

"We were dressed to celebrate the wedding day," they sing. "We marched along in the St. Anne's parade, sang out our hearts while they sent away their dead. The sun shone on the river, we began our lives instead."

On the surface, Trent and Hearst appear to be one of a handful of duos squarely in the whole indie folky singer-songwriter genre, but they pull it off well and bring more rockabilly swagger than most to their music.

Hearst's raspy Southern accent lends texture to the music on songs like "Botched Execution," a song about a murderer freed after a botched execution, who gets his anyway; in their ode to Gram Parsons, "San Andreas Fault Line Blues," she channels the sweet melodies of Emmylou Harris, Parsons' frequent partner.

These songs are dense and sometimes sly, loaded with nuanced characters and deeply layered emotions, like the song "This Ride," written after Trent's friend was shot to death by a pair of teens holding up the bar where he worked. —

Dig it

Shovels and Rope, with singer-songwriter Indianola.

Where • The Depot, 400 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City

When • Thursday, Nov. 17, 8 p.m.

Tickets • $26