Sarah Shook is best known as the singer and guitarist for rowdy country band Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, but Cruel Liars, the debut album from their latest project, the darker and more intimate Mightmare, proves that pigeonholing them would be a grave mistake. Shook grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household where their exposure to music was limited to classical and religious styles, but in their late teens a friend turned them on to secular music and they became enamored with indie rock. After relocating from the northeast to North Carolina, they found their stride as a country musician, naming their first band Sarah Shook & the Devil as a tongue-in-cheek nod to their pious upbringing. By then, they were a divorced, single parent in their early 20s, working several jobs to make ends meet while gigging on the side. With the Disarmers, launched in 2014, Shook has poured their rebellious spirit and hardscrabble wisdom into three albums of effusive, outlaw country music that elicits a smile as often as a tear in the proverbial beer—most recently with Nightroamer, which came out on Thirty Tigers in February.
If it weren’t already clear that Shook has a knack for reinvention, Cruel Liars provides ample evidence. They began working on the material in the pandemic lockdown of early 2020 and wound up writing, recording, and producing the record at home, playing all the instruments (with the exception of a handful of bass tracks by Aaron Oliva). More bedroom than barroom, Cruel Liars grapples with heartache, loss, and self-discovery in intricate tunes that merge Shook’s indie-rock influences with dark, stripped-down Americana and pop. While the record is most powerful in its most intense moments, such as the driving, shadowy “Enemy,” the whole thing is made more compelling by Shook’s characteristically sharp lyrics and richly layered vocal harmonies. Mightmare doesn’t sound like the Disarmers, but Shook’s ability to mine something universal from intimate thoughts and tales connects them at their core. The strength of this first release already makes an urgent question of where Shook will take the project from here.
Mightmare Sun 10/30, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15 ($12 in advance), 21+
