“Black cloud followin’ me around/Little storm in my head”
The opening line to the title track of the new album by Sarah Shook & the Disarmers hit me right in the sinuses. I’m battling a head cold and the haze it’s making me live in right now tints everything a little darker. This is but a personal trial, for the wider state of the entire world today also weighs heavily upon me. “Hey baby I’m barely gettin’ through each day” A bleak, relatable beginning, but stick around for a dose of raw honesty rooted in reality.
Revelations has the much needed "indie country" sound I’ve been looking for that lyrically opens the listener’s eyes and ears. It’s a mix of mellow and hard-edge, a roller coaster ride where you’re freefalling off the edge of heartache. It’s like standing at a crossroads where one way is all you want to let go of and the other is all you've already reluctantly released. It’s the remnants of what’s left under our fingernails when we finally claw something from our tight grips. There’s also a sense of being freed of whatever millstone we’ve got around our necks in certain songs. Sometimes these things are people, sometimes they're feelings or long-held beliefs.
“Backsliders” and “Criminal” embody the idea of a love that’s all wrong but is too delicious to kiss goodbye. “You Don’t Get to Tell Me” is an empowering statement of one knowing what’s right for one’s self, its narrator insisting on self-reliance being at the forefront of self-care. “I built my life on the edge of a knife/When nobody believed that I could”. I get a strong sense of breaking through an ingrained pattern of thinking with this song. It tells of finding a new way that works for you rather than what you've been told is the right way to live your own life.
There’s a hopeful glimmer in the song “Dogbane” with the lyric “We got hope and heartache in each gaze/A little thing can take your breath away”. Yes, there are indeed shining moments in this time of darkness that many of us feel crushed under. Sometimes we can muster the strength to look for them. Listening to Revelations was like someone lighting a soft, ambient lantern that gave me just enough insight to see by.
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers have been playing together since 2014 and this is the band’s 4th studio album. The band members are vocalist River Shook, Jack Foster on drums, electric guitar player Blake Tallent, Mason Thomas on the bass, and Evan Phillips on pedal steel. Revelations features Andrew Lambie on bass and Nick Larimore on steel. I love Shook’s vocals so much. Their ability to emote the passion of the album’s lyrics, especially in the “take no sh*t” manner in which “Motherf*cker” is sung, is done subtly and sweetly. “Nightingale” has a pretty bad*ss guitar solo in it, and I took special note of the cool backing vocals in “Jane Doe”.
Ten tracks is all it took to turn me on to this one. I especially appreciate when an album seems to be the soundtrack for what I’ve got going on in my present moment and this one totally did that for me. “It was the time of day you strain to hear a single sound/And a body does not leave a trace of shadow on the ground.” Revelations was perfectly placed in my orbit today and I’m so glad for that.
Check out Sarah Shook & the Disarmers on Instagram and by visiting their website at disarmers.com
Jennifer Patino lives in Traverse City and loves music. Visit her blog at thistlethoughts.com