» Listings for 2023

1. 2023 Albums Thing 178 - Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit “The Nashville Sound”

   Posted on 9:10am Wednesday 20th Sep 2023

   “The Nashville Sound”, Jason Isbell’s 6th solo album, was recorded in Nashville’s famed RCA Studio A, where, in the 1960’s it became the location where developed the musical and production style now known as…the Nashville sound. Since the release of “Something More Than Free” Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires had become parents and, as I well know, when that happens your world view shifts “"Finally you get all of those things [in your life] dealt with. What are you gonna talk about now? You can't moan, and you can't sing the blues anymore. So you have to figure out how to empathize, better than you've ever done."

   There are 3 songs on this record that if I was asked to explain to someone what Jason Isbell was about would serve as the perfect examples, “If We Were Vampires”, “Hope The High Road” and “Something To Love”, we’ll get to them presently. Many of the songs are about Isbell’s earlier life starting with “Last Of My Kind”. It’s built around a delicious acoustic guitar theme that repeats and repeats and you cannot help but end up whistling along to (or at least I can’t). It’s a character study of the singer “built upon partially who I was when I first started touring, when I came from Alabama and started traveling around the country for the first time.” and the people he grew up around from small Alabama towns who told him cities were terrible places.

   “Couldn't be happy in the city tonight, I can't see the stars for the neon lights

   Sidewalk's dirty and the river's worse, Underground trains all run in reverse”

   “Cumberland Gap” is a rocker with the singer reflecting on his drinking days and his parents role in his life; “Tupelo” is fabulous (and how come so many American place names make great song titles ? I can’t imagine being excited about songs titled “Watford Gap” or “Telford” can you ?) both lyrically and musically. It’s a song looking forward, to going to a “place” where things are better with people you want to be with (“Driving fast with the windows down, A past I don't belong to now, a mystery”).

   “White Man’s World” throws a howl at the overt racism you find across America, which I’ve always found most strange it being a country almost entirely built on immigration. Isbell addresses his ‘white privilege’, something he has no control over, he’s a father now and wants to protect his daughter from the worst of Trump’s “‘muricah”, how Native American traditions are belittled and how easily overt racism toward African Americans enters everyday conversation (“The highway runs through the burial grounds, Past the oceans of cotton”). Consider Isbell is a Southerner with, at this time, a very Southern audience, this album was made in Nashville TN, it’s hard hitting stuff.

   “If We Were Vampires” may well be one of the greatest love songs ever written. If you recall what I had to say about Nick Cave’s “(Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting For?” some months ago I feel much the same about “If We Were Vampires”. It’s about love as you get older, about how you would express yourself to the one you love if you knew you would live forever, how you might not feel the need to tell them you love them so often if there was to be no end to it. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful. I don’t often quote entire verses here but…

   “If we were vampires and death was a joke, We'd go out on the sidewalk and smoke

   And laugh at all the lovers and their plans, I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand

   Maybe time running out is a gift, I’ll work hard 'til the end of my shift

   And give you every second I can find, And hope it isn't me who's left behind”

   All this wrapped up in some superb acoustic guitar picking and a gorgeous harmony vocal from Amanda Shires. It took me until 2017 to get to see Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit (sadly sans Ms Shires) live. He played this song as his first encore and he opened with Side 2’s first song “Anxiety”, I was transfixed for the 90 minutes or so inbetween.

   “Anxiety” starts with a big, fat, almost proggy, guitar riff that then settles into an admission of the kinds of doubts we all suffer from at times (whether we admit to it or not) the lines “It's the weight of the world but it's nothing at all, Light as a prayer and then I feel myself fall” and particularly “Anxiety, Why am I never where I am supposed to be?, Even with my lover sleeping close to me, I'm wide awake and I'm in a pain” express things I know all too well.

    “Molotov” comes on equal parts Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and REM and we look to be back in the drinking days.

   The album finishes with two of the three songs I highlighted right at the start. “Hope The High Road” breaks out the big fat Southern guitars again and offers hope. It may well be the case that “Last year was a son of a bitch, For nearly every one we know” but by the end of that verse “Wherever you are, I hope the high road leads you home again to a world you want to live in” and my favourite line on the whole album “We'll ride the ship down, Dumping buckets overboard,There can’t be more of them than us, There can’t be more…” something I’ve been thinking my entire adult life and I’m still waiting, like Jason, to see proof of just that.

   “Something To Love” is a song sung to his daughter. It looks back on great times past and wishes y’all the best for the future “Just find what makes you happy girl and do it 'til you're gone”. It also has another of those idealised images I have of the South that likely no longer exists but I’d hope to find should I ever make it there “…old men with old guitars smoking Winston Lights, Old women harmonising with the wind…” a beautiful scene to end on.

   There’s love and hope and politics and self doubt, looking back and looking forward all over “The Nashville Sound”. It’s a really, really wonderful record and you might want to give it a try.

   If We Were Vampires - https://youtu.be/ivYkyC8J29M?si=IkRCJM1bWI26OzmI

2. 2023 Albums Thing 177 - Jason Isbell “Something More Than Free”

   Posted on 9:10am Tuesday 19th Sep 2023

   If I was forced to choose a favourite Jason Isbell album I’d be struggling to choose between this one or the next, so please don’t force me. This was the album where I locked in with him again, where I thought “finally, he’s done it”. There is not, to my mind, a song out of place on this album (or its follow up).

   Finally the 400 Unit as we know them today are all assembled on “Something More Than Free”. Isbell obviously, Sadler Vaden (guitar), Jimbo Hart (bass), Derry deBorja (keyboards), Amanda Shires (fiddle) and Chad Gamble (drums). Why they aren’t credited here is another mystery.

   We start with “If It Takes A Lifetime” a song about a working man who seems not too far removed from Jason Isbell, doesn’t drink (now) keeps his head down and works hard following some hard times but knowing that eventually things will come good for him

   “Well I got too far from my raisin’, And I forgot where I come from, And the line between right and wrong was so fine

   Well I thought the highway loved me, But she beat me like a drum, My day will come if it takes a lifetime”

   “24 Frames” has also become a staple of 400 Unit live shows, a scene by scene look at a relationship, it’s unpredictability and the pitfalls along the way, 24 frames being the speed being the speed film runs at so the human eye can process it, clever huh ? “Flagship” is a delicate acoustic ramble through people watching at a smalltown hotel as a comparison to his relationship (with Amanda Shires ?); “The Life You Chose” is a look at smalltown Kentucky life and asks the question (again ?) are you here because you want to be or…

   “Children Of Children” is one of Isbell’s highlight songs live, a song about the writers parents who had him when they were both teenagers. In interviews he’s confessed to a “guilt that I’ve always felt about coming into the world at a time when my parents were very young and not necessarily prepared for it” which could hardly be said to be his fault. During the tour to support “Something More Than Free” it became a centrepiece of the set with Isbell going off on extended guitar solo’s, which yes I’ve confessed to not liking much but this one was the first time I realised what a superb player he is.

   “I was riding on my mothers hip, she was shorter that the corn, All the years I took from her just by being born”

   The title song is one of my absolute favourite songs, not just by Isbell but by anyone in all honesty. The story of an ordinary working man and his troubles, joys and hopes. The lyric always puts me in mind of my brother in law, Rob, in a good way. A song about the dignity of labour, the work ethic and real people’s lives. It’s utterly beautiful

   “I don't think on why I'm here or where it hurts, I’m just lucky to have the work”

   After that “Speed Trap Town” lays out smalltown life and the realisation that you can leave; “Hudson Commodore” tells of "an independent lady who loves cars.”;  “Palmetto Rose” is an ode to working people trying to turn a buck in South Carolina and I’d always thought final song “To A Band That I Loved” was aimed at the Truckers but it turns out the titular band in question is Centro-Matic (no I’ve never heard of them either) about who Isbell has said “I used to ride out with them and play guitar in their band, when the Truckers weren't touring. I felt some real grief when they split up”.

   Finally Jason Isbell made an album that lived up to the promise of the songs he’d contributed to the Drive-By Truckers. From here on in he’s his own person, no longer an ex-Trucker. He has his band around him, he’s sober, married and happy. There will still be bumps in the road but “Something More Than Free” confirmed (at least to me) that Jason Isbell is one of the greatest songwriters in America today.

   Something More Than Free - https://youtu.be/Ph3AbR5x6Bs?si=mFyAAGudrtieGetA

3. 2023 Albums Thing 176 - Jason Isbell “Southeastern”

   Posted on 9:05am Saturday 16th Sep 2023

   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