Sarah Shook & The Disarmers (Photo by Rob Schanz)
In 2022, Sarah Shook & The Disarmers released Nightroamer (via Thirty Tigers). The alt-country outfit is now on tour, and they perform at DC9 on Friday, April 21.
For the new album, Sarah Shook has pulled from Hank Williams, Elliott Smith, the Sex Pistols, and Shook’s own inquisitive, open, outlying self to create pop-savvy, honky-tonk punk that’s both an escape and a reality check –– a re-opened wound and a balm. Relationships and life-changing realizations are dissected with honesty and humor, three tight minutes at a time.
“Where is the handbook for relationships that isn’t just how to keep your man around for 20 years?” Sarah said. “Where is the offbeat situational relationship handbook? I feel like a lot of what I write is that — and most of the time, I don’t have the answers. I’m just asking the questions that we’re all asking.”
Watch the official music video for “No Mistakes” by Sarah Shook & The Disarmers on YouTube:
North Carolina’s Sarah Shook sings with a conviction and hard honesty sorely lacking in much of today’s Americana landscape. Always passionate, at times profane, Sarah stalks/walks the line between vulnerable and menacing, their voice strong and uneasy, country classic but with contemporary, earthy tension. You can hear in their voice what they’ve seen; world weary, lessons learned — or not — but always defiant. They level-steady mean what they say. Writing with a blunt urgency — so refreshing these days it’s almost startling — Sarah’s lyrics are in turn smart, funny, mean, and above all, uncompromising. The Disarmers hit all the sweet spots from Nashville’s Lower Broad to Bakersfield and take Sarah’s unflinching tales out for some late-night kicks. At times, it’s as simple and muscular as Luther Perkins’ boom-chicka-boom, or as downtown as Johnny Thunders. The Disarmers keep in the pocket, tight and tough.
The Disarmers line-up is currently Jack Foster on drums, Blake Tallent on guitar, Andrew Lambie on bass, and Nick Larimore on pedal steel.
Sarah Shook & The Disarmers
DC9
Friday, April 21
Doors @ 7pm
$16/$18
All ages