North Carolina’s Sarah Shook sings with a conviction and hard honesty sorely lacking in much of today’s Americana landscape. Always passionate, at times profane, Sarah stalks/walks the line between vulnerable and menacing, their voice strong and uneasy, country classic but with contemporary, earthy tension. You can hear in their voice what they’ve seen; world weary, lessons learned—or not—but always defiant.

They level-steady mean what they say. Writing with a blunt urgency—so refreshing these days it’s almost startling—Sarah’s lyrics are in turn smart, funny, mean, and above all, uncompromising. The Disarmers hit all the sweet spots from Nashville’s Lower Broad to Bakersfield and take Sarah’s unflinching tales out for some late-night kicks. At times, it’s as simple and muscular as Luther Perkins’ boom-chicka-boom, or as downtown as Johnny Thunders. The Disarmers keep in the pocket, tight and tough. The Disarmers line-up is currently Jack Foster on drums, Blake Tallent on guitar, Andrew Lambie on bass, and Nick Larimore on pedal steel.

This North Carolina honky-tonk punk strikes a defiant onstage posture with a voice that goes right for the throat, a feral switchblade snarl that sometimes eases and glides but never softens…coming across as Chrissie Hynde with a drawl. — Rolling Stone

• Honest to a fault and as foul-mouthed as a drunken sailor, she’s a nonconforming spitfire who’s proud of not fitting in with mainstream country music. — Rolling Stone
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  This North Carolina honky-tonk punk strikes a defiant onstage posture with a voice that goes right for the throat, a feral switchblade snarl that sometimes eases and glides but never softens…coming across as Chrissie Hynde with a drawl.— Rolling Stone
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  “Shook bucks both Nashville’s mainstream and the overly self-aware Americana scene…a believable transformation of country’s vintage melancholy. — The New York Times
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  This is outlaw country in the classical sense — hard-driving songs about hard living and deep regrets. Shook leads the way with forthright lyrics that refuse to give her a pass for the pain she’s caused others — or vice-versa. — Wide Open Country
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  Sarah Shook entered the spotlight as one of the most important new voices in new country music. Like she’s been there all her life — TIDAL
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  Her cussed-minded delivery and blemishes-and-all defeatism [is] the perfect complement to her band mates’ hillbilly choogle. — Rolling Stone
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  Like Tammy Wynette fronting the Ramones — Missoula Indepenent
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  Her songs may draw on classic country themes such as boozing, romance (in all its ups and downs), and hard living, but her perspective is unmistakably grounded in the present. — She Shreds Magazine
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  With Sarah Shook in the mix, hard core country is alive and well, and dangerous as all get out. — No Depression

• Sarah Shook & the Disarmers are a Country band out of North Carolina that wear its Rock’n’Roll smirk like a tattoo…[and] sing for sad smiles and hard-luck tales. — The Alternate Root