Sarah Shook & the Disarmers add Scandinavian dates to "Revelations" tour

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers add Scandinavian dates to Revelations tour. Revelations is the last release of the North Carolina outfit. On thisr fourth album they are at their very best. They use bluesy riffs and a windswept pedal steel to create songs that are as terminally modern as they are mythically ageless.

To say that Revelations, is a product of survival would be an understatement. Written and recorded in the aftermath of getting sober and receiving a dual diagnosis of ADHD and borderline ASD during the pandemic, Revelations sounds like the kind of album somebody who’s drunk their weight a couple thousand times over and lived to see tomorrow might make. Disarmers bandleader River Shook is many things—nonbinary, atheist, a single parent—and all of that takes a delicate and attentive center-stage on Revelations. With their band—Blake Tallent, Jake Foster, Andrew Lambie and Nick Larimore—they have crafted what is the best record of their career thus far. Revelations is confident and revels in its plainspoken clarity. Musically, it’s an alt-country zenith.

On “Backsliders,” River pays tribute to their fellow wrong-turners with a generous love song glazed with retrospect. “Now I got one foot out the door and you’re still gettin’ dressed,” they sing. “Hate I can’t say no as easily as you say yes, I’m a real piece of shit and you’re a vixen in a dress.” The track is queer as all get-out, told empathetically from the perspective of someone who’s hurdled enough roadblocks in their life to sing with such bare-chested vulnerability. Larimore’s pedal steel is again a highlight here, but this time paired with Tallent’s acoustic guitar chugging along to River’s vocal phrasings.

Revelations gets angry, too. “Motherfucker” is a snearing lament of betrayal and bitterness, as River doesn’t mince words, declaring that “when I die and split hell wide, gonna be some sight to see and I’ll gladly burn forever when you’re six circles deeper than me.” The arrangement begins in the orbit of soft, featherlight acoustics before kicking it up a notch into a real rabble-rousing jaunt of pedal steel. River’s vocals coil into glimpses of a higher-register, flirting with a falsetto but never fully giving themselves away. That restraint fades on “You Don’t Get to Tell Me,” as they question the authority of a land of suffering governed by a higher-being across a romping, cut-and-dry country-rock track, singing “We don’t need no god to feed each other good.”

Led by River’s self-production, Revelations glows because of its cohesiveness. The Disarmers don’t reinvent the wheel here, nor did they ever need to. The grandiosity is firmly embedded in the talent, as River and their band inject some serious punk rock attitudes into a well-worn infrastructure of venerable country tunes. The guitar tones are crisp, the pedal steel sounds like a million bucks. But, more than ever, River takes us to a place of reclamation and shows us the heart of what’s at stake. Revelations is an outlaw record that considers what it means to be a trans Southerner during a capitalist crisis. It’s a project that is as terminally modern as it is mythically ageless. What gleams at the album’s core is a demand for kindness towards the time it takes to bring joy, clarity and identity into a lifetime. River Shook may be knocking on the door of their 40s, but Revelations sounds like their time here with us has only just begun.

10/04: London, UK - Colours
11/04: Bristol, UK - Exchange
13/04: Manchester, UK - The Lodge
14/04: Glasgow, UK - Hug and Pint
15/04: Nottingham, UK -  The Chapel at The Angel Microbrewery
17/04: Sint-Niklaas, BE - De Casino
18/04: Groningen, NL - Vera
20/04: Rotterdam, NL - Rotown
22/04: Essen-Werden, DE - Jugend- und Bürgerzentrum Werden
23/04: Fredericia, DK - Tøjhuset
24/04: Grenaa, DK - Pavillonen 
25/04: Odense, DK - Posten
26/04: Copenhagen, DK - Beta
27/04: Kristianstad, SWE - Biljardkompaniet
29/04: Stockholm, SWE - Debaser
30/04: Oslo, NO - John Dee
01/05: Örebro, SWE - Schreibers garage
02/05: Falkenberg, SWE - Rootsy Live Falkenberg
03/05: Göteborg, SWE - Pustervik
04/05: Malmö, SWE - Plan B