Friday 6 April 2018

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers - Years, album review


Many Things, All Great

Outlaw rockabilly partpunk Country, or more truthfully – not needing to find the new words for what is familiarly excellent – this is resurgent Country, the playing traditionally pedal-steel and country-rock with twang in the vocal and instrumentation, the lyrics expressing a defiance that has always been there in real rather than domesticTV Country and reflecting on contemporary and obviously personal commentaries about identity and feelings. And Shook has a direct way of expressing this in person/interview, for example,

“It’s so, so fucking frustrating to me to watch a bunch of rich ass motherfuckers playing pop country parading around in skin-tight jeans with their fucking bleached teeth and perfect hair singing about how hard their life is and how they have to drink whiskey every night to cope,”

You can read the full album review and interview responses here. Indeed, there’s some in-depth stuff out there to chase down if interested.

It’s the music that prevails. A neat exemplar is the drawl and heart of The Bottler Never Lets You Down, a lugubrious paean to drinking in comparison with personal relationships – so an inherent degree of dark irony – and that pedal-steel and other guitar work sets its doleful but still punchy musical backdrop, Shook singing with all the self-protest of someone who knows the actual truth.

Like her debut, reviewed here, this is pertinent, immediate and delightful, and listening now has made my morning. Listen yourself to a full stream at the ‘interview’ link above, or just do the sensible thing and get it here.


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