
“It Doesn’t Change Anything,” the most recent single and video from the new album from Chapel Hill’s Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, is a heavy song that is lightly presented. On the heavy side are the lyrics, starting with the opening couplet: “The devil on your shoulder is your only friend/There he sits just to remind you all good things come to an end.” But the lighter-side contrast is found in the song’s accompanying video, which shows Shook taking a walk in a very peaceful stretch of woods.
“That’s my daily walk,” says Shook. “Out near the border between Chapel Hill and Pittsboro. Whatever else is going on, it’s very calming.”
Calming rituals have come in handy for Shook the past few years, during which Shook’s career almost came to a halt. In addition to the virus-pandemic shutdown, there was also the not-so-simple matter of Shook’s previous label Bloodshot Records going on an extended hiatus. All that contributed to an unplanned four-year gap since Shook’s last album.
But things are looking up. Shook’s new Pete Anderson-produced album “Nightroamer,” from whence came “It Doesn’t Change Anything,” will be released Feb. 18 by the well-regarded Americana-focused label Thirty Tigers. Shook and the Disarmers are scheduled to mark the album’s release with a hometown show at Carrboro’s Cat’s Cradle that night, followed by a run of dates through the Southeast – virus permitting, of course.
“We’re living in a very surreal time, as is everyone right now,” Shook says. “I’m really excited to share this record, get it out into the world after two years of sitting on it because we actually made it before the pandemic. Then everything shut down before we could release it.”
That was unfortunate, because “Nightroamer” shows real growth from Shook’s first two albums. Working with Dwight Yoakam guitarist Anderson represented an attempt by singer/guitarist Shook and the Disarmers – lead guitarist Eric Peterson, bassist Aaron Olivia, drummer Jack Foster and pedal-steel guitarist Adam Kurtz – to move beyond their previous straight-up honky-tonk into new sonics and textures. Sounds on the new album range from pure pop to the spaghetti-western twang of the opening track “Somebody Else.”

“I’ll admit I had some apprehensions about trying this because I like to keep working with who we’ve worked with before,” Shook says. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, you know? But in discussions, I did see the wisdom of my bandmates and manager about branching out a little, taking some risks. It’s a real departure. But good music is good music, and making it keeps us happy.”

Down the road a bit, this fall will bring a long-in-the-works solo project for Shook, without the Disarmers. She spent much of the past two years’ quarantine period working on a mostly one-woman show of a solo album that is closer to alternative rock than country music. Titled “Mightmare,” it will be released under the artist name Cruel Liars. The album title came from Shook seeing a lyrics-captioned video for Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1970 song “Run Through the Jungle,” with the word “nightmare” misspelled.
“That just seemed to fit what I was working on,” she says. “A happy accident. It’s really not country at all, more indie-rock and even a little new-wave pop. I’ve worked on it for well over a year, all by myself except for Aaron (Olivia) playing some bass. It’s my baby.”
In the meantime, one advantage of “Nightroamer” taking so long to come out is that Shook already has a fair amount of new, yet-to-be-recorded Disarmers songs she wrote during the down time. Songwriting is a therapeutic process for her, especially since her songs tend to deal with difficult subjects like addiction and depression.
“I started writing songs because I didn’t know how to talk about feelings or process the things I was experiencing,” Shook says. “Certain mental-health and substance-abuse issues are taboo to talk about and stigmatized. But the energy you have to expend to keep a smile on your face when you don’t feel that way really makes it worse. I think it’s important to talk about that because pretending it doesn’t exist does not work. So many of us don’t talk about social anxiety, mental health, struggles of the LGBTQ community. But starting those conversations is really important.”