Sarah Shook & The Disarmers, Years

Let me be clear right here, right now: Sarah Shook’s voice ain’t for everybody. It’s not pretty, it’s not seductive, it’s not bright or cheery or sweet or any of that other stuff people normally go for when it comes to female vocalists music, including country music.

When Shook sings, her vocals are rough around the edges, so down-low they’re dragging in the mud, occasionally warbly and shaky, and with a quasi-Appalachian twang to ’em; she sounds like she’s constantly riding the line between crying and getting into a fistfight with whoever happens by next. It’s tough and determined but kind of murky lost-sounding at the same time, in the way that Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra’s voice sometimes is.

At first listen, I’ll admit that I wasn’t getting it, but she won me over pretty quickly, in part because it’s clear as day that Shook herself gives not a single fuck whether or not her voice is pretty or friends or accessible or whatever else. And why should she? She’s just here to play music, and whatever you or I think doesn’t matter one bit.

On new album Years, that’s a good thing for everybody, because it lets her and her Disarmers roll and stumble their way through a good-sized pile of ripped-open-raw barroom ballads about love, loss, pain, and drinking. The song structures are classic country, with a whole lot of Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash looking in around the corners, especially on “New Ways to Fail” and the heartbreaking “Parting Words,” but Shook makes them her own effortlessly, building the sound into something new.

On tracks like “Good As Gold,” those Hazel Dickens-esque vocals take center stage over a background of impressively pretty, folk-tinged roots-rock and some damn fine pedal steel(?), drawing you along into the words as Shook both pours her heart out and slams the door closed at the same time. There’s a sharply intelligent edge to it, as when Shook declares she can’t lose someone because “I don’t think of you / like a thing of mine / that I can just up and lose.”

“The Bottle Never Lets Me Down,” “Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don’t,” and “Heartache in Hell,” for their part, are cry-into-your-beer slices of Western swing that sound damn near out-of-time; they sway and swoon like a drunk nearing closing time and wondering how the hell their life got to the point where they call a barstool home.

Then there’s “Lesson,” “Over You,” and “What It Takes,” all three of which seem to me to hew closer to more contemporary alt-country artists like Old 97’s or gone-before-their-time Fort Worth band The Orbans, melding those country influences with heavier, louder guitars and more of a snarl, and all of which work amazingly well, burning with passion and fury in alternate measure.

It’s interesting to see (and hear) music like this coming around, I’ve got to say, because most of the country/roots music I’ve heard lately that’s not straight-up traditional stuff has blended country and folk with the absolute worst elements of pop and EDM and rock to turn it into bland, mainstream-radio garbage that I couldn’t tell apart if you lined it all up against a wall, police lineup-style.

Shook and her ilk, on the other hand, take old-school country and pull it forward while keeping all the things that made it good, that made it real, while merging in elements that actually make sense. I sure as hell hope albums like Years become a trend, because I could listen to this all damn day.

(Feature photo by John Gessner.)