Every once in a while a really special album comes along that is so good it makes labels and genre classifications irrelevant – it’s just damned fine music. Wherever you sit on the scale of Rock and Roll if you love the sound of the guitar and appreciate a well-honed melody and a thoughtful insightful lyric then Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s new release is essential. In the last ten years I can name only a handful of albums I’d put alongside this if I wanted to show a visitor to our planet what music can do to soothe the soul.
There’s an honesty to Isbell that many try to portray in their music but any often fail whether through lack of real understanding, lack of craft or lack of vision or simply not being the real deal. Isbell is no false prophet, when he sings about the working man or the American spirit, the battlers and the working class life you cant help but feel what he does. He could well be the best songwriter of his generation period, but certainly in his chosen arena of Southern-tinged, rootsy, distinctly American Rock and Roll.
Despite the rather off-putting title: ‘The Nashville Sound’ Isbell’s June 16th release and the follow up to 2015’s critically acclaimed ‘Something More Than Free’ (winner of two Grammy Awards – Best Americana Album & Best American Roots Song for “24 Frames”) is something to behold.
Featuring songs that explore and paint a series of compelling vignettes on subjects as diverse as privilege and power (and possibly Trump) (‘White Man’s World’), love (‘If We Were Vampires’), mental health (‘Anxiety’), the aftermath of break-up (‘Chaos and Clothes’) and bluegrass-stained hope (“Something To Love”) the album is far more than a series of carefully observed lyrics.
Starting out with the bluster of ‘Last of My Kind’ which might be a question Isbell might ponder seriously himself, and a rousing ‘Cumberland Gap’ which is not a cover of the classic Woody Guthrie but a damned fine song in itself. Isbell has put together a thought provoking and confident album that isn’t afraid to rock out like on the afore-mentioned and the wonderful ‘Hope The Highroad’ or hang back and explore the more introspective aspects of Americana.
As a writer Isbell has that real knack of choosing his subjects wisely, he manages to pick up on eternal themes and reflect on them through the eyes of the common man with such authenticity, but he also has the knack of picking subjects that resonate with the concerns we all share about living in the times we do.
This is poetry man. It’s full of raw and real emotion, full of life and love and pain. It’s been years since we had someone that we could name in the same breath as Dylan or Cohen, but this is the voice of our generation, and here you can hear it all laid bare. This is as honest as it gets. It makes you wish for simpler times, and at points through the music allows you to imagine that one day we might if we lose all that holds us down to get back to that simpler life and live free.
With music comes hope and here Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit helps remind us how music can both heal and unite us all.