Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
(Lightning Rod)
Up on my wall is a Jason Isbell poster from a brief acoustic tour he did in support of his solo debut Sirens of the Ditch, released in the summer of 2007 a few months after his split from the Drive-By Truckers. Right under the autograph he inscribed for my kid the poster reads "acclaimed songwriter and guitarist formerly of the Drive-By Truckers." That got me to thinking recently, while I was playing his third post-DBTs album: once an artist enters a new, clearly defined phase, for how long should the artist expect his or her former life to shadow (and in some instances, overshadow) the subsequent one? It's a fair question, and a sometimes vexing one that scores of musicians have faced over the years. With Here We Rest, the product of a couple of years' worth of steady touring from Isbell and his band the 400 Unit behind their self-titled 2008 release, the answer can be found in the songs and the sonics.
The combo - Isbell, guitarist Browan Lollar, bassist Jimbo Hart, drummer Chad Gamble, keyboardist Derry deBorja - eases into the 11-song record like a group easing into a live set via the gentle country-folk of "Alabama Pines" which, with its musical overtones of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer" and a storyline about a lost soul desperate to reconnect with humanity, and with himself ("I don't even need a name anymore," sings Isbell). The fireworks, literal and subliminal, start going off soon after. "Go It Alone," about another person who finds himself at a personal crossroads, is served up on bed of anthemic Stones and Petty, while the reflective, seen-through-another's-eyes "Stopping By," is luminous with piano and jangly guitar and a sweetly-wrought bridge, not to mention containing one of Isbell's most memorable lines ever ("I think the best of me is still standing in the doorway"). The band takes a trip down to New Orleans with the rollicking, percussive, Little Feat-esque "Never Could Believe," then slips back into Muscle Shoals under the cover of darkness with a smoky, deeply soulful cover of the Candi Staton nugget "Heart On A String," originally recorded by Staton at Muscle Shoals way back in 1970 and here rendered as a deeply soulful duet between Isbell and Georgia songbird Abby Owens. Somewhere along the way they find time to detour through Appalachia for the bluegrass-flavored "Tour of Duty," about a returning soldier painfully aware that he's damaged goods no matter how chipper a face he puts on. (Isbell clearly has deep empathy for our military personnel, having dipped into related thematic waters on "Dress Blues," from Sirens, and 400 Unit's "Soldiers Get Strange.")
Yet the album's clear standout is also its most left-field number, a deceptively upbeat ditty whose tuneful, fiddle-powered (courtesy Amanda Shires, who also contributes harmony vocals) arrangement contrasts with a markedly darker, part-cautionary story line: the protagonist of "Codeine" sits at home, waiting for his woman, but she ain't coming home tonight because, as the singalong-style chorus advises, "one of my friends has taken her in/ and feeding her codeine." That "Codeine" is undoubtedly destined to become both a conversation piece and a concert crowd pleaser is testimony to Isbell's ability to keep several lyrical balls in the air at once - amid the heartache, the song also has some funny, self-deprecating asides (think of the classic image of the clown who is laughing on the outside while crying on the inside) - even as his band is matching him mood-for-mood.
As Here We Rest - a phrase borrowed, incidentally but not insignificantly, from Alabama's original state motto, which was adopted shortly after the Civil War ended - unfolds, it's hard not to think of an earlier, equally complex meditation on how people feel and act when they find themselves at the ends of their ropes during troubled or desperate times - Bruce Springsteen's Darkness At the Edge of Town. This is not to overstate the case by saddling Isbell with the fatal "young Springsteen tag" (much as The Boss himself was hyped, early in his career, as yet another "young Dylan"); despite certain key age/resume similarities between the two men at their respective stages of development, the 2011 musical milieu remains vastly different from that of 1978.
But still...
The Isbell record is, in a word (or several), a huge artistic achievement, and on multiple levels: the lyrics are evocative, emotional, and multifaceted; the music itself, deftly arranged, in archetypal tight-but-loose fashion; and the whole thing resonates and lingers in the mind long after the disc has spun. You'll want to play it over and over and over, as I have. Hell, it ain't even a "new phase" for Isbell - he already made his leap of faith awhile back. Time for the rest of y'all to come around to that fact.
DOWNLOAD: "Codeine," "Stopping By," "Heart On a String," Go It Alone" FRED MILLS
Go here to read BLURT editor Fred
Mills' recent interview with Jason Isbell, who talks about the new album, about
what inspires him as a songwriter, and even a bit on his relationship with his
erstwhile bandmates in the Drive-By Truckers. See also the latest print issue
of this magazine for more Isbell.
