Sarah Shook & The Disarmers

+ Maz O'Connor + Alice Niel

The Hug and Pint, Glasgow, GB

£15
Entry Requirements: 18+
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When Sidelong, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers’ debut album, was released in early 2017, it quickly earned kudos for its blast of fresh, fierce honesty and sly wit. It was a welcome new voice in a genre too often mired in the staid and conventional. And while that record may have come to many as a surprise, Years solidifies the point: Sarah Shook & the Disarmers have moved from getting people’s attention to commanding it. The album–with its sharpened songwriting, unique perspective, deepened sound and roll-up-your-sleeves attitude–will grab you by the collar and put a defiant finger to your chest. It is resolute, blunt, and unflinching.

Inspired by artists such as the Sex Pistols, Elliott Smith and Hank Williams, Sarah sings with confidence, control, and, at times, a hint of menace. The Disarmers match her on every track, coloring the tales of resilience and empathy with as much urgency as ever as well as a broader sonic sweep. It’s easy to hear Sarah as a close cousin to artists like Hurray for the Riff Raff and Margo Price on the title track, or in the country-‘60s mod vibe on “Lesson.” “Good as Gold,” sporting a kiss-off line for the ages, “You’re as good as gold/ I’m as good as gone,” is both vulnerable and defiant, soaring with pop-inflected harmonies. And with an expansiveness evoking the wide-open West, “What it Takes” speaks to the truth of the record, to her life, and to the universe.

At its pounding heart, Years crackles with a pointedly contemporary and relevant take on the outlaw spirit. Built around the buoyant pedal steel of Phil Sullivan, and the post-punk rattle and Live at San Quentin hum of Eric Peterson’s guitar, there are echoes of Nikki Lane and Merle Haggard as much as Ty Segall. Its home is the ragged-but-real honky tonk, not the bro-country “honky tonk.” The barroom singalong “New Ways to Fail” is classic, smile-through-the-pain country. “Damned If I Do” could be the “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin” of the 21st century, if we let it; a perfect song for rolling in the wry and sneaking in a quick two-step. The sinister “The Bottle Never Lets Me Down” will get anyone who’s ever been wronged righteously flipping the bird as they knock back the next shot. Therapy in the face of personal devastation takes many forms, after all.

As Sarah herself tells 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 “fk you, I do want I want” from the rooftops to the mother****g cosmos.

Line Up

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers

Singer-songwriter based in London. 'Maz O'Connor's ace, apart from her remarkable songwriting talent, is her captivating voice ****' Q Mag

Her songs are always beautifully crafted, and range from intimate love stories, to epic creation stories, with the occasional tragedy told beyond the grave thrown in. She accompanies her uniquely pure voice with guitar, tenor guitar, piano and sometimes shruti box.

Still only 25, she has been touring around the U.K. And abroad for almost 3 years now, and her relaxed and easy charm with her audience makes for a gig that's both moving and uplifting. It's this reputation as a brilliant live performer that has led to support spots with David Grey and Thea Gilmore.

Her latest album 'The Longing Kind' was released in February and is her most accomplished yet. Compared to Joni Mitchell by The Guardian and given 5 stars by Songlines, 'The Longing Kind' is O'Connor's work maturing into something brave and beautiful.

“BBC Performing Arts Fellowship graduate Maz O’Connor is a real find, fusing influences from the past (Joni Mitchell) with those of the present (Bon Iver) to concoct a dazzling array of part electric, part-acoustically crafted folk that occasionally borders on the experimental.” (Drowned in Sound)

‘A perfect blend of youthfulness and gravitas ****’ The Observer

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Alice Niel