The Scene

If you ran a bracket for the best songwriter in the world at this moment, Jason Isbell would probably be a top seed. You want your life immortalised in a sad country ballad then this is your dude. But then he’s also pretty prominent with a folky story song or a rampaging rock and roller. Isbell plays a mean and understated guitar and sings in a smooth southern twang but it’s his way with words and a melody that really sets him above and beyond. He’s a graduate of Southern Rock Deities the Drive-By Truckers, booted out of that band for his boozing ways (though not before writing such instant classics as Decoration Day, Outfit and Danko/Manuel), though he’s now clean and sober and married with a kid on the way. Isbell broke through with a fantastic 2011 album ‘Here We Rest’ although it was his first album since getting sober, 2013’s ‘Southeastern’ that really made his name. Now he’s back with a fresh effort.

The Songs

If It Takes A Lifetime – Raucous country opener, full of wisdom and hope. A fuller sound than most of what’s to follow.
24 Frames – Taking a 90s indie direction, it’s the first one that really gets stuck on repeat in your brain. Shades of REM in the jangly guitars but the lyrics are all Isbell. Brilliantly written, fantastic tune.
Flagship – Sweet and sparse with some beautiful lines. A potent but understated vow for enduring love in a cynical world.
How To Forget – Mid-tempo shuffle, trying to escape the mistakes of the past and move forward.
Children of Children – The emotional cornerstone. A powerful tale of teen mothers, such as his own, with the album’s lone extended jam at the back end. This one’ll truly break your heart.
The Life You Choose – Back to earth with a lighter mood. Well, for Isbell anyway. Now he’s tempting a former lover by asking if this is what she really wants from life. And he’s feeling bad about it.
Something More Than Free – Here’s to the working man. Raise a glass for those who work their skin to the bone to get by.
Speed Trap Town – A Springsteen-esque, first person, low-fi, short story about a man trapped by circumstance who finally takes it to leave town for a fresh start. Great song.
Hudson Commodore – Harmonies make it sounds like the Eagles if they didn’t suck. Another Isbell-special family saga.
Palmetto Rose – Groovy blues rocking stomper. Full of echo and thumping bass. Chorus takes a sharp change in tempo for an anthemic chant-along.
To A Band That I Loved – Paying tribute to that first band you heard that really seemed to get you. Like they were writing about your life, somehow.

The Vibe

Jason Isbell is not a man who writes throwaway songs. He is a true craftsman. Every line feels lived in and agonised over. His words don’t flow through him like poetry, they’re short stories – written and re-written to perfection. You could compare him to great writers just as you can to great songwriters. Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver spring to mind. Especially Johnson. Isbell has the same efficiency of language and he can find art in the places of society that people tend to go out of their way to avoid. There’s a line in ‘Children of Children’ that goes: “How could we expect to stay in love when neither knew the meaning of the difference between sacred and profane”. It’s a lesson that Isbell himself has learned well.

‘Southeastern’ was his sober album. Cleaned up and recently married, he’d found his salvation and his grounding. The album reflected that so intimately. But now what? Now he’s trying to walk the straight and narrow having stared down his fears and weaknesses and come out the other side. This is the stage when artists tend to flinch. Not Isbell. He’s still finding truths and doubts, just with a larger net. That does mean that we lose a degree of immediacy and that counts against SMTF on the first few listens.

Still, Isbell has this incredible talent for setting a complete scene in a few sentences. You know, like in a short story. He leaves a few details on the table and you somehow know the rest already. Like with ‘Flagship’:

There's a few too many years on this hotel

She used to be a beauty you can tell

The lights down in the lobby they don't shine

They just flicker while the elevator whines

And the couple in the corner of the bar

Have travelled light and clearly travelled far

She's got nothing left to learn about his heart

They're sitting there a thousand miles apart

It’s an amazing song. The kind that sweeps by you in a whisper until you lean in to really listen. A gorgeous love song but one full of self-awareness. Look at that old couple in the bar, broken and loveless, a marriage held together by habit alone. “Baby let’s not ever get that way”. Except there’s a feeling of inevitability to it. Do all relationships end up in that stale, passionless state? Is the key to keep trying, holding destiny at arm’s length? According to Isbell the key is to “keep yourself naïve”.

And so many other songs hit hard like that. ‘Children of Children’ is the most powerful. “I was riding on my mother’s hip, she was shorter than the corn/And all the years I took from here, just by being born.” Goddamn, that stings.

Isbell has an empathy for his subjects that is crucial. Without it he’s just another country fraud, with it he’s like a Springsteen or a Waits. ‘Speed Trap Town’ sounds like it could have had a home on Bruce’s ‘Nebraska’ album. Likewise, it could have turned up in a Denis Johnson collection. There’s something about a story of escape and redemption like that which makes you just wanna cry.

The Music

Dave Cobb is back as producer, hailed as a major part of the success of ‘Southeastern’. Cobb does a fine job of letting the songs breathe but to be honest the production can seem quite dull in places. All the interesting elements buried in the mix. ‘Here We Rest’, even despite a few missteps, sounded more vibrant, for sure. Those songs were the last set that were really full-band efforts. Since then the singer/songwriter thing has really come to the fore for Isbell.

There’s never any intrusive soundscaping, though there definitely could be more in terms of dynamics. Too many songs fall in the same general grouping of folksy and sad. Plenty of minor chords. A great strength of ‘Southeastern’ was being able to switch it up with something like ‘Songs That She Sang in the Shower’ in the middle. SMTF has a couple of variables, the opening track is one, as is ‘Palmetto Rose’, but it’s a shame that there wasn’t a rollicking rocker like a couple of Isbell’s Tuckers output. ‘Something More Than Free’ – the song – changes pace, though it feels a little too celebratory to capture the same workingman’s pride as his DBT buddies Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley have so often mastered. It’s a solid track all the same.

The dude can shred on guitar but tends to keep things simple instead. The almost waltzy choruses of ‘Teach Me How To Forget’ and ‘The Life You Chose’ take a bit away from them, and ‘Hudson Commodore’ may have some pretty harmonies and fiddle but it doesn’t quite hit home like others here.

That fiddle is Jason Isbell’s secret weapon. Supplied by his wife Amanda Shires, she also sings some dazzling back up on occasions. It’s easy to say that she’s been underused on this album, but too much of a good thing and all that. Her harmonies on ‘Flagship’ are chillingly good.

It’s understandable that Isbell & Cobb’s arrangements don’t lean on the country side of things, even with his Alabaman twang, but they also eschew any other kind of classification. It all falls in that murky ‘Americana’ area. A bit of this, a bit of that. Plenty of the best songwriters were unclassifiable, so that’s not a huge deal, but again, some variety would have done fine. Gotta mention how on-point Isbell’s voice is though. Deadly.

Revelations

“A man is the product of all the people that he ever loved.”

“My day will come, if it takes a lifetime.”

“You thought God was an architect, now you know. He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow.”

“You’ve gotta try to keep yourself naïve. And in spite of all the evidence, believe. Volunteer to lose touch with the world and focus on one solitary girl.”

“I’ll throw rocks at your window from the street. We’ll call ourselves the flagship of the fleet.”

“I was sick, I was scared, I was socially impaired. It was years ago.”

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

“But it never did occur to me to leave 'til tonight.”

“May you find what you gave, all that hope. Somewhere down at the end of your rope”

Finale

Jason Isbell can be a tricky bloke to get a line on. ‘Southeastern’ was very sparse and precise, and it took several listens for the songs to start to worm their way into your brain but once they did they were impossible to escape. You’d listen and a song you’d previously cast off as filler suddenly hits you like a baseball bat to the face with its heart-breaking profundity. It’s actually crazy how good he is, and how easy it is to take that for granted.

SMTF is gonna suffer in comparison to its predecessor, but not by too much. SE probably has the best couple of songs between them but it’s not like either is full of clunkers. The guy’s set a high bar and he’s mostly kept it up. This is probably gonna be the album that people underestimate until they come back to it in six months. The stories have a way of getting to you. To be honest, it’s just a pleasure to be able to unpack it. Isbell is the most literary songwriter out there and that’s a detractor to some and a distraction to others. The band mostly all get their chances to shine but this album isn’t trying to be an epic jam session. Treat it like a collection of short stories and let it breathe. ‘Something More Than Free’ has plenty of wisdom to offer.

But it does take a few spins to get there, so you can tell the reviewers that only listened to it once or twice by their complaints (*cough, Pitchfork, cough*). It’s not a concept album, it’s a collection of songs by a brilliant songwriter. As good as anyone currently working at it, no kidding. The songs need some unravelling is all.