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| Sarah Shook photo credit: Jillian Clarke |
Listening to and loving Sarah Shook & the Disarmers’ songs, it strikes me that their most compelling attribute is Shook’s indomitable spirit. It is tattooed into every lyric and each vocal tic, vaulting the choruses and emboldening the musicianship. It’s the sort of spirit necessary to survive in 2018, and it is unapologetically alive and thirsty and picking up steam this very minute. And Sarah Shook is not feigning one ounce of it. Already fully established on the band’s full-length debut, 2017’s Sidelong (one of my favorite albums from last year), that spirit is harnessed into even tighter songwriting throughout Years, an impressive feat that’s all the more uncanny in seeing its release less than twelve months after putting out such a strong first record.
The tunes this time around are very much cut from the
same cloth as Sidelong, so any fans
Shook & the Disarmers minted on the road in the past year will likely become
even more vocal acolytes this time around. Surrounding the thematic core of
troubled times, drinking tunes, perseverance and kiss-off attitude, the playing
on Years is rousing and more refined (best
not to be confused with too polished or overproduced). This is a streamlined
set of songs dealing with fairly traditional country and rock tropes, but Shook’s
singular vocals and fortitude provide them a distinct power and urgency that
allows them to feel both lived-in like a rugged, beloved flannel and uniquely refreshing
like a first pint of a great new brew. Perhaps the finest example of this is the
outstanding lead single “Good as Gold,” a three-minute nugget of Sun
Records-rooted chugging rhythm, pedal steel swoon and lyrics about pining for a
flame while an old jukebox queues up the wrong song at the right time and frees
the protagonist to hit the road for good. It’s the sort of song that’s
perfectly attuned to genuine emotion and relatable circumstance, and, like
pretty much everything on the album (See: the fed up and poison-tongued “New
Ways to Fail” and “Damned if I Do, Damned if I Don’t,” the crackling, singalong
melancholy of “Parting Words” and “Over You,” and the blissful, jangling harmonies
and staggeringly well-executed tempo change into a heart-swelling coda and
album-closing moment of classicist pop perfection on the title track), it just
might hit the sweet spot for almost anybody with a predilection for a certain wayward
disposition and a fondness for country songs with rock grit that all but
guarantee a hangover in the morning.
Years is out now via Bloodshot Records.
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers - "Good as Gold"
