» Listings for 2023

1. 2023 Albums Thing 175 - Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit “Here We Rest”

   Posted on 8:55am Friday 15th Sep 2023

   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

2. 2023 Albums Thing 174 - Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit “Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit”

   Posted on 9:00am Thursday 14th Sep 2023

   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

3. 2023 Albums Thing 173 - Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit “Live At The Twist & Shout”

   Posted on 9:00am Wednesday 13th Sep 2023

   This one is in the right place chronologically by when it was recorded but not when it was released. The recording itself was made on 16th November 2007 at a record shop in-store performance, but it was released on Record Store Day 2018. Effectively it’s something close to a bootleg that was issued by Isbell’s former record company, New West, and is a very early recording of him with what has become his full time backing band, the 400 Unit (named after the psychiatric ward of Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital in Florence, Alabama incidentally). There are no band intro’s or credits on the record so I don’t know who the members of the 400 Unit were on this recording. It’s reported that Isbell was less than happy about its release, although the sharp eyed will note that the video I’ve included below is from his official YouTube channel.

   There are only 6 songs, so it’s more of a mini LP/EP really, 2 from “Sirens Of the Ditch” (“Grown” and “Hurricanes And Hand Grenades”), 3 Truckers tunes (“Goddamn Lonely Love”, Danko/Manuel” and “Outfit”) and finally a spirited cover of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic”.

   It’s a faithful recording of an early Jason Isbell live show, maybe just one for the enthusiasts.

   Hurricanes And Hand Grenades - https://youtu.be/yyS_PKA5jrw