It was my friend Jen from Connecticut who is responsible for my Jason Isbell obsession as it was she who first introduced me to the Drive-By Truckers all those years ago. As each solo Isbell album was released Jen would regale me with tales of going to see him live and be most put out as she raved about each solo album release and I confessed I was less than impressed with whichever release we were discussing. It wasn’t until his next release, “Something More Than Free”, that I fully bought into solo Isbell while Jen was incredulous that I didn’t think “Southeastern” was a masterpiece. I have to confess that I now realise I was wrong and almost all of this album deserves that description, it’s bloody wonderful.

Jason Isbell had been working with Amanda Shires for a number of years. She made her first appearance on an Isbell album on his previous release, “Here We Rest”. From his time in the Drive-By Truckers Isbell had been a heavy drinker of Jack Daniels and an “enthusiastic” Cocaine user. He admits he doesn’t really remember those years in the Truckers, he was usually so drunk or high. In February 2012 Shires, Isbell's manager Traci Thomas, and his friend Ryan Adams executed an intervention which led to Isbell going into rehab and getting sober. He has talked extensively and written about his now sober life, most obviously in the opening song on “Southeastern”, “Cover Me Up” with the line “I sobered up, I swore off that stuff, Forever this time” usually eliciting wild cheers at his live shows. It’s not the only time on this album he touches on his addictions and I gotta say, his sober life has improved his music greatly. In February 2013, two days after work was finished on “Southeastern” Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell were married. 

Side one of “Southeastern” is almost faultless. “Cover Me Up”, which I seem to be quickly bypassing, is genuinely one of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard, and it’s arguably not even the best song on the album ! A gentle acoustic strum with Isbell pouring his guts into the performance. Live it is absolutely breathtaking, a quite magnificent song

“So, girl, leave your boots by the bed, We ain't leaving this room

'Til someone needs medical help, Or the magnolias bloom”

The guitars are broken out on “Stockholm” which seems to reference a specific incident in a specific city, I can only presume involving Isbell and Shires (“Once a wise man to the ways of the world, Now I've traded those lessons for faith in a girl”), with whom he duets this one like Gram and Emmylou. Track 3 “Traveling Alone” has to be about their marriage. Again he admits to his addictions (“So high the street girls wouldn't take my pay, They said come see me on a better day, She just danced away”) but most of the song concerns a realisation that the time has come for him to settle down, or…

“I've grown tired of traveling alone, Won't you ride with me?”

Cheesy ? Yes, but very, very honest.

As great as both “Cover Me Up” and “Traveling Alone” are this albums undoubted moment amongst moments is “Elephant”. It took me a long time to understand this song, to realise what everyone else seemed to hear in it except me, but once I did, oh brother does it hit hard. It’s the story of a man and a woman, he’s in love with her, she is a livewire, likes to drink, likes to get high but she’s also dying from cancer. She demands he take her home but she’s going to bed alone and he hangs around and sweeps up the hair that is falling out because of her treatment. He sees her surrounded by her family but also sees that she’s dying alone. She makes jokes about cancer when she’s drunk, he sings her classic country songs and they both “Try to ignore the elephant somehow” it’s a beautiful song, so sad but full of love, hope and kindness at the same time, which is a pretty clever thing to pull off.

“There's one thing that's real clear to me, No one dies with dignity

We just try to ignore the elephant somehow”

We then have to suffer through the utterly forgettable “Flying Over Water” (in digital format it’s one I usually skip, this albums one black mark) before Side one rounds out with “Different Days” a lovely acoustic ballad about times gone by and how the singer has changed since those times.

“And the stories only mine to live and die with, And the answers only mine to come across

But the ghost that I got scared and I got high with, Look a little lost”

Over on Side 2 “Live Oak” (“There's a man who walks beside me, It is who I used to be, And I wonder if she sees him, And confuses him with me”), ”Songs That She Sang In The Shower”, “New South Wales” and “Super 8” (“I don’t wanna die in a Super 8 Motel, Just because somebody’s evening didn’t go too well” life on the road as an addict) are more confessions of mistakes and regrets. 

“Yvette”, Isbell has said, is a companion song to “Here We Rest”’s “Daisy Mae”, both characters are the product of broken homes and the difficulties that arise from that. “Relatively Easy” (“You should know compared to people on a global scale, Our kind has had it relatively easy”) ends things on a vaguely optimistic note.

I don’t know why suddenly the 400 Unit go missing from the credits, maybe because only three fifths of what we know now as the 400 Unit are on here (Amanda Shires, drummer Chad Gamble and Derry DeBorja on keyboards) but after 2 albums with them it seems a bit sudden to lose them, maybe they just weren’t considered a full band at this point. Whatever the reason, Isbell crafted an almost perfect set of songs (again “Flying Over Water” has no place here) that, granted, took me some years to appreciate fully. The whole record is painfully personal, full of regret and confessional in places. These are songs of, from and about him and his place in the South and among its people. The songs touch on their triumphs, their losses, their miseries, regrets and a fair old bit about Isbell’s hazy past and how he now hopes to live a better life.

From now on a sober Jason Isbell is on an upward path. If you were to start anywhere with Jason Isbell any one of “Southeastern” or the following 2 albums would be the thing to dive into.

Elephant - https://youtu.be/fS8ohtu_LBA

Up until now I considered that Jason Isbell’s solo career hadn’t lived up to the promise he’d shown as a member of the Drive-By Truckers (for reasons I’ve laid out earlier). “Here We Rest” is where Jason Isbell starts to get into his stride. It’s not perfection but contains some great songs within. We add some more pieces to the 400 Unit too as Jimbo and Derry are joined by drummer Chad Gamble and Amanda Shires on Fiddle and backing vocals. Not far to go before the 400 Unit as we know it today is in place. 

Right from the off “Alabama Pines” sets the standard. A simple tale of someone who has moved away from where he was bought up and dreams of being back home. Isbell has said it’s not necessarily the place that is important to get back to but “home” could be a place in your life when things were different/better. The song itself is a gentle country strum and was named “Song of the Year” at the 2012 Americana Music Awards, so the rest of the album had something to live up to. 

Isbell serves up songs focussed on the people of the struggling South, tales of ordinary people. “Stopping By” is about a child trying to find their estranged father; “Tour Of Duty” is a companion song to “Dress Blues” from “Sirens Of the Ditch”, Isbell has said of it “When you’re in a small town, there’s a higher percentage of people that fight overseas…I try to write about the effect the war is having on the homefront or on individuals. I do know something about that.”.

“Go It Alone” breaks out the big fat Southern guitars, “We’ve Met” and “Daisy Mae”, a beautiful song on the subject of child abuse (!), all point toward where Jason Isbell is headed. “Codeine” is a bouncy upbeat song with a jaunty, barroom country feel and some lively fiddle from Ms Shires, it’s about addiction ! Codeine is a prescription painkiller, at times used to wean Heroin addicts off their drug of choice but which is itself highly addictive. In the song Isbell’s girlfriend is strung out and “One of my friends has taken her in and given her Codeine”. Isbell writes about addiction often, he was himself an addict, and this is as strangely upbeat a song about addiction as you’re ever likely to hear.

“Never Could Believe” and the cover of George Jackson’s “Heart On A String” I could happily live without and the penultimate “Save It For Sunday” is a gentle piano led ballad to end on.

The songs are starting to come, Isbell is still finding his voice as a singer and as a writer. The 400 Unit are beginning to come together around him and I think they play an important role in Isbell’s future ability to express his thoughts in song. “Here We Rest” isn’t quite there, but it’s closer than he’s gotten up to now.

Codeine - https://youtu.be/1f7r9K7SUt4?si=wpYp_lhTM5aYVw1g

And the 400 Unit make it onto an (official) album, well the bones of the 400 Unit in Bass man Jimbo Hart and Keyboard player Derry de Borja, there’s still some churn to happen on the drum stool and at guitar sidekick and the small matter of a fiddler, but we’ll get there eventually.

Much like “Sirens Of The Ditch” upon release I didn’t think this album was all “that”. As I look at the track list now there are a couple of songs that stick out (“Cigarettes And Wine”, “The Last Song I Will Write”) but not many more that make me think I gotta listen to that right now. But then I start playing it and some of these songs start to jump out and change my mind about them. Overall, once again, this album isn’t going to break any musical barriers, Isbell is well versed in (outlaw) country, southern rock and soul music and he takes elements from all those styles to build his sound. What he does is gonna stand or fall on the quality of the songs.

“Seven Mile Island” starts us off with swampy slide guitars and the story of an unwanted pregnancy and a useless father who by songs end is telling his daughter “I just can’t be saved”. 2nd track “Sunstroke” is a beautiful piano led slowie with a lyric that hints at a breakup in process. Next song “Good” comes on all beefed up guitars, a proper (punk) rocker and is almost an apology from one party in the previous songs breakup to the other. It’s got a chorus that gets stuck in your head and you find yourself singing to yourself 4 days later.

Then we hit the first of the standout tracks, “Cigarettes And Wine”. It’s a plodding, barroom Country ballad, it’s as much about Isbell’s excesses as those of the girl that smelled of cigarettes and wine, who might not be a girl at all but a metaphor for the singers excesses. It’s a beaut of a song.

Side one’s lyrics contain a lot of Biblical references (“They tell me you walk on the water now”, “Guess the devil wouldn’t have you”, “Wings on her shoulders and feet”, “See the man’s got too much to count, Try to recollect the sermon on the mount, Blessed are the poor when they’re all swinging from the gallows”). Th religious overload is something of a hazard with US, especially, Country influenced music. It feels like there’s a confession of things the singer now regrets going on, referring back to that breakup and its causes.

Then we reach “Coda”, a 2 minute instrumental that splits the album down the middle and leads us into it’s second half, which starts with the bluesy “The Blue” beginning with the lines “Don’t roll away that stone, girl, Leave it where it lay”, another Biblical reference and a feeling that he will return to in future on “Southeastern”.

“No Choice In The Matter” is another piano led piece but in a style that wouldn’t be out of place in a small Gospel church and when the Stax like Horns hit for the chorus it’s a real pick up. The guitars are busted out and turned up again for “Soldiers Get Strange” and penultimate song “Streetlights” opens with “Where's that angel with dirty knees who wasn't hard to please when we first met?” harking back to the girl who smelled of cigarettes and wine.

“The Last Song I Will Write” feels like a wrap-up for all the apologies and excuses for the broken relationship at the start of the record. It’s a coming full circle for the album lyrically and musically as it it ends with the themes first met in “Coda” at the end of the first half of the album (strangely when this album was re-issued in 2019, the copy I own on lush Green vinyl, “Coda” was moved from the centre of the running order right to the end, after a cover version which isn’t on the original album, where it makes absolutely no sense !).

As I said about an Emmylou Harris album a few weeks back, if you’re after new sounds and new styles then this is the wrong place for you to be looking. Jason Isbell makes music very much set in a musical framework of Country, Soul and Southern Rock with which he is familiar and very proficient. But he writes great and interesting songs within that musical frame. As with his previous studio album, he will make better records than this but he is definitely progressing and I really like it better than this missive suggests. 

Cigarettes And Wine - https://youtu.be/AbxMZm0eP6s?si=levIgrh6982-SayY