Sonically, there are a few things we got right in the 90’s–stompy rage fueled queer bands, hazy uber-pedaled guitar, poeticism to be yelled full chested towards the windshields of our 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) hand vehicles. More generally, there was also a lot we got wrong. Sarah Shook’s new solo project, Mightmare, finds a way to roll the sounds we couldn’t live without into a response to the things we couldn’t live with, confronting their habits and the rules they live by in the process. Loved for their work in Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, Shook’s Cruel Liars brings crispy clean, country twanged vocals to the table alongside the furiously urgent need to express themselves. The record marks the process of finding meaning in spaces outside of gender or drinking or protocol, and slingshots itself towards something both conceptually remarkable and a simply exhilarating, embodied knockout.
