Denim on Wax: Sarah Shook & the Disarmers

Sarah Shook and the Disarmers (photo by poprockphotography)

Right from the onset of Sidelong, the debut album from Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, it is unmistakable there is an impassioned and defiant presence setting up camp in the outlaw country scene. The Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based band are dialed into both the crusty jags of cowpunk and heartsick swoons of classic country balladry, and Shook and the Disarmers draw a bold line in the sand between their sound and whatever country-pop confection is hot on the radio or selling out amphitheaters this summer. This is honest outcast rock with a country soul and boozy breath.

At the heart of it all is Sarah Shook’s arresting performance, equally adept at translating quivering vulnerability and doubling down on her hellraising spirit while singing drinking songs full of breakups, fuck-ups, hangovers and nameless Wild West rogues. Whether it’s drinking water at night because all the whiskey went down as breakfast or relationship woes that turn happy homes into bars and foreshadow nails in coffins, Shook is proficient at getting to the emotional core of a song and showing what’s at stake in just a few lines tipped with confidence and a barbed tongue. Throughout, the veteran Disarmers give the songs punch with rolling and tumbling life, a whiskey-fueled whirlwind of rock-and-roll attitude that regularly hauls in around the three-minute mark. At twelve songs clocking in at 38 minutes, Sidelong is an outstanding, filler-free country debut that runs hot-blooded and unapologetically punk at heart, just as kindred to the Replacements and the Buzzcocks as it is to Waylon and Loretta. It’s the very sort of record you may have known next to nothing about going in, but you just might find yourself returning to for weeks on end and trying to convert most of your friends.