It really does come as something of a surprise that Sarah Shook didn’t grow up immersed in country music. Listening to the North Carolina based singer-songwriter’s sophomore album Years, you’d be forgiven for assuming that she grew up in honky-tonks and started mainlining country sounds from birth rather than coming to it later in life as she apparently did. Shook’s catchy, relatable songwriting embodies the spirit of country music so well and throws in a touch of punk rock for good measure too. I could go on about it, but who better than Sarah Shook herself to describe it? As she puts it:
This record is about finding a way. A way through exhaustion, depression, betrayal, hangover after hangover, upper after downer after upper, fight after never-ending fight. It’s about picking yourself up and dusting yourself off after years of being trampled and beaten down, jutting your chin out, head high, after they’ve done their worst, and saying, “Still here.”
This record is shouting “f**k you, I do want I want” from the rooftops to the mother******g cosmos.
Really, what more could you want from an album?
The album is full of gems such as “New Ways To Fail” (with its skateboarding-themed video that we wrote about here), “Parting Words” and album opener “Good As Gold” which features one of my favourite lyrics on the album (“No, it won’t be long ’til the wrong song comes on at the right time”).
Sarah Shook & The Disarmers will be playing a show at The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday, August 25. It should be a good one. If by chance you can’t make it or you need something to tide you over until the show, you can check out the lyric video for “Good As Gold” below: