ALBUM REVIEW: Shane Smith & the Saints – Norther

In 2020, I was only able to go to one proper, full-capacity concert before the world went haywire.

At the end of January every year, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo throws a barbecue cook-off and carnival to kick off the month of festivities inside the Frost Bank Center. Part of that includes a free concert at the carnival and in the only year I’ve been able to attend, Wade Bowen headlined the Saturday night show in freezing, misty and honestly just awful conditions. I remember sitting through most of Bowen’s set regretting not bringing another jacket and wondering why I wasn’t having as much fun as I usually did at his sets.

Another thing was weighing on my mind at the time too as Bowen played: “That opening band absolutely crushed it and I need to listen to them more.” The opening band was Shane Smith & the Saints and that night was my first introduction to the band.

A lot has changed since then for the Austin band and most of the change has come pretty rapidly. While the band had always done well in the Texas and Oklahoma circuit, their popularity shot out of a cannon in November 2021 when their song All I See Is You was featured in back-to-back episodes of Yellowstone. Since then, their streaming numbers went through the roof, their shows started selling quicker and moving to bigger rooms, their name started moving up higher on festival lineups and they spent the entire next summer burning up highways opening for Whiskey Myers all over America.

In the span of about two years, Shane Smith & the Saints went from being a decently big name in the Texas Country circuit to being a household name in the Alt-country and Americana world. There was one issue prevailing from the success though…they didn’t have anything new to show for it. All I See Is You was part of an album released in 2015, their latest album at the time was released in 2019 and the band was touring so heavily that it seemed like a miracle to even have two singles, Hummingbird and Fire in the Ocean, released in 2022.

Smith expressed the same feeling, saying that it was tough to pull this one off and explaining that if the band had a 24-72 hour window in between shows, they would load the bus in Austin, drive it to Dallas, spend that entire window in the studio, then head to whatever the next city on the calendar was. For an album that was recorded as sporadically and as chaotically as this one, you would never be able to tell listening to the final product.

This is an incredibly bold album for the band and I love how risky of a project this is when they have more eyes on them than ever before. While so many bands and artists in the Texas scene have been putting out records that sound the same over and over again for 10, 20 or 30 years, Smith & the Saints are still pushing forward and still trying to break new ground instrumentally, production-wise and performance-wise. The band’s progression from each record, from Coast up until now, has been incredible to see.

And when I say risky, I don’t mean Smith is dropping rap verses in songs or drummer Zach Stover has traded out his drum kit for an iPad drum machine. There are just different production quirks that really beef up this record thanks to Beau Bedford handling the reigns this go around. There are string sections, different effects thrown in different places that you wouldn’t normally hear on their albums, and most importantly, Bedford did a great job of capturing their massive live sound. A great example of all of this is one of this record’s teaser tracks and one of my favorite Shane Smith & the Saints songs to date, Adeline.

I love everything about this song. A weeping fiddle that opens the song adds to a really haunting and sort of creepy atmosphere while Smith sings the first verse but as soon as he reaches the end of the first chorus, this song just explodes into a thunderous mid-tempo rock song with soaring vocals from Smith. It just keeps growing from there. The harmonies keep stacking on top of each other and the addition of a string section during the bridge makes the song even more tense and dramatic.

I also love Smith’s writing on this song. It’s a very unique take on a heartbreak song with Smith singing about someone who thought they were taking the high road leaving a relationship but as time has moved on, they realize how much they regret this move and wish that Adeline would’ve held them back and kept them close.

Most of the sonic risks on this album go over without a hitch as well. The rustic tone of Bennett Brown’s fiddle in The Greys Between fits the song so well, as does his distorted fiddle and Smith’s distorted vocals on the song Fire in the Sky, a blistering song at the beginning of the album. The band’s harmonies are fantastic as per usual at this point as well. The choruses of songs like Wheels and the title track Navajo Norther pack such a bigger punch because of those.

However, I say most because it doesn’t always stick, the song Field of Heather being one of the biggest examples. While I think Smith’s writing is solid, this song just feels half-baked and the whole thing also just feels kind of muffled and mixed weird. The drums are buried while an acoustic guitar solo before the bridge is so much louder than everything else to the point where it’s kind of distracting. Also, while I do enjoy the song 1,000 Wild Horses quite a bit, Smith reaching into his upper register for the bridge feels kind of forced and I don’t think it really blends in too well with the song. Last thing, the risk you take with putting out so many singles ahead of releasing an album is putting out a lot of the album’s best songs ahead of the full project being out. I think that happened to a degree with Norther with six of the album’s 13 songs being released beforehand and most of my favorite songs are those singles.

That’s about where my gripes with the album end though. I have way more good things to say about the album than bad.

Book of Joe is an incredible opener to this album and should the band ever retire their signature intro of Prometory from Last of the Mohicans into The Mountain from their album Geronimo at live shows, I can picture this song burning down stages at the beginning of their shows. I also love the bit during the second pre-chorus where Stover’s tom-snare beat and Smith’s vocals sync up which makes the song a lot more epic.

And while I do think the singles may be my favorite songs, that doesn’t make them bad at all. The Greys Between and It’s Been A While are songs that I think are future classics in the band’s catalog. The Greys Between is a song that just exemplifies a lot of what makes me love this band. A steady rhythm, gorgeous chorus harmonies, great chemistry between the band members and I love the switch to double time for the second verse. The chorus is bittersweet, dealing with a relationship that falls apart despite neither party being in the right or in the wrong. I get the hook stuck in my head daily and the same goes for It’s Been A While. It’s another song about love going wrong but the subject is trying his hardest to make sure he can get back to his love interest before she hits the road. This might be a stretch but for me at least, it’s the same sentiment as George Strait’s I Can Still Make Cheyenne. Wanting to make sure this person stays in your life and trying your absolute damnedest to see them one more time after being away from home for so long and with the threat of them leaving forever looming.

I already touched on it a bit but the song Wheels is another standout in the tracklist. It’s a song about the band’s life on the road with some funny and sometimes sad observations of it. Smith opens the song singing about how one person needs to take the wheel while he takes a piss. While in a way, Smith and the band wouldn’t trade this life, you can obviously tell the toll it takes on him when he sings about foggy headlights that are shining but not as bright as they used to, also saying at the end of the chorus that he feels too caught up to feel sometimes.

I also think it’d be remiss to not bring up All The Way which is an absolutely gorgeous piano ballad dedicated to his wife, who also helped him write it. It’s a song about devotion and promising her that he’ll stick with her until the end of time. There’s a really cute line near the end where he sings:

When age like poison steals your prime
I’ll be there to hold the line
With every wrinkle, shade of grey
I’ll be with you all the way

It’s silly but it’s heartfelt and something about it just hits me right in the sweet spot.

So to kinda wrap this up, this is a great record and a record that I think is going to raise the band’s profile even more than it already has in the past few years. Above all else, I’m just very happy that the band didn’t play it safe or try to go too mainstream and basic because there are a lot of bands in their position that would fold and do that. I’m happy that the band went for it and got a little weird with it at times because it’s going to have a huge payoff. This is sure to become one of the most buzzed-about albums in the Americana/Alt-Country world this year and it’s another trophy on the mantle for Smith and the Saints. I cannot recommend checking out this album enough.

One last thing before I close this review out, buy a ticket and please go see them live.

Try Checking Out: Book of Joe, Adeline, The Greys Between, Navajo Norther, All The Way, It’s Been A While, Everything & More

Norther is out via Geronimo West Records and Thirty Tigers. It’s available to stream or purchase digitally on your favorite streaming platforms. Physical copies are also available via the band’s website or your local, independent record store.