What makes a great album?<\/p>\n
First are the songs, which have to reach deep inside and tell truths that not only resonate with, but stir, maybe even haunt the listener. Then you need a band with just the right feel, and a producer who understands how to bring out the best in the music. And then, because this is an album, you have to sequence the songs for optimum impact and flow. From the moment the first note arrives, you\u2019re telling two stories at once\u2014the story within the song, and the story of the album.<\/p>\n
Jason Isbell\u2019s Southeastern<\/i> is a great album.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s great in part because it\u2019s transformational, illustrating the precise moment Alabama-born Americana artist Isbell went from a good ol\u2019 boy with a heap of talent to a man on a mission; from a solid writer\/player\/singer to one of the most honest and authentic voices of our time; from a dangerously self-destructive young drunk to a clear-eyed, open-hearted man with everything to live for and everything to lose. Much more than a collection of songs and stories; Southeastern<\/i> chronicles two critical turning points in Isbell\u2019s life: falling in love with his partner-then-wife Amanda Shires, and getting sober.<\/p>\n
Another thing that makes Southeastern<\/i> great is the way it breaks the rules. Rather than opening big and easing his way back to a ballad around track three or four, Isbell opens small but fierce, with an acoustic love song for the ages. \u201cCover Me Up\u201d is spare and raw and poetic and self-lacerating\u2014\u201cA heart on the run keeps a hand on the gun you can\u2019t trust anyone \/ I was so sure what I needed was more, tried to shoot out the sun\u201d\u2014and then celebratory of the very essence of love: empathy and passion and perseverance. \u201cPut your faith to the test when I tore off your dress in Richmond on high \/ But I sobered up and I swore off that stuff forever, this time \/ And the old lovers sing \u2018I thought it\u2019d be me who helped him get home\u2019 \/ But home was a dream, one I\u2019d never seen till you came along.\u201d The entire lyric is brilliant, but equally important is the way Isbell sings it: like his life depends on it. There\u2019s a deep ache in his voice\u2014from the pain that he tried to numb, and for the love that he\u2019s found to at least partially fill in that hole. This song reminds me of a coyote howling at the moon, that sense of desperate longing that can only be eased by the company of a mate.<\/p>\n
The big number you might have expected up front arrives second with the celebratory \u201cStockholm,\u201d muscular electric guitars framing a road song about missing the home he\u2019s just found. \u201cOnce a wise man in the ways of the world \/ Now I\u2019ve traded those lessons for faith in a girl\u2026 Stockholm, let me go home.\u201d Framing a similar message in a fresh context, the acoustic \u201cTraveling Alone\u201d is Isbell remembering the life he left for the life he now wants to lead. \u201cDamn near strangled by my appetite \/ In Ybor City on a Friday night \/ Couldn\u2019t even stand upright \/ So high, the street girls wouldn\u2019t take my pay \/ She said come see me on a better day\u2026 I\u2019ve grown tired of traveling alone \/ Won\u2019t you ride with me?\u201d You can hear the weariness in his voice as he sings these lines. You don\u2019t want to say that if it weren\u2019t for Shires he\u2019d be dead, but it doesn\u2019t seem out of the question either: \u201cHeart like a rebuilt part \/ I don\u2019t know how much it\u2019s got left.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dancing like a prizefighter, in the spot you might be expecting another love ballad, Isbell places \u201cElephant,\u201d one of the most brutal, moving, honest story-songs he (or anyone) has ever written. A riveting lament about a barfly standing by and supporting a female drinking buddy who\u2019s dying of cancer, every line here feels bracingly real, shaded with anguish and black humor, full of human frailty and implicit acknowledgment of the impossibility of comforting someone who knows they\u2019re dying. \u201cShe said \u2018Andy, you\u2019re taking me home,\u2019 \/ But I knew she planned to sleep alone \/ I\u2019d carry her to bed, sweep up the hair from the floor.\u201d A crushingly good song.<\/p>\n
Next up, \u201cFlying Over Water\u201d delivers an observant, churning rocker about a pair of troubled lovers on the run from their own connection: \u201cFrom the sky we look so organized and brave\u2026 I can\u2019t for the life of me say why \/ Did we leave our love behind.\u201d Closing out a tremendous first half, the chiming, sweetly melodic \u201cDifferent Days\u201d offers a thoughtful reflection on maturity, looking back at how he might have handled things 10 years ago, but those were different days.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The second half speaks to the wisdom of the sequencing in the sense that the strongest numbers are all up front, but the rest are no slouches either. The spare country-blues \u201cLive Oak\u201d is another tale of transformation: \u201cThere\u2019s a man who walks beside me, he is who I used to be \/ And I wonder if she sees him and confuses him with me.\u201d The one base left uncovered until now\u2014a breakup song\u2014is addressed by the lilting, mournful \u201cSongs That She Sang In The Shower.\u201d Then the tender thoughtfulness of \u201cDifferent Days\u201d returns in \u201cNew South Wales,\u201d a loping, impressionistic acoustic number with references to cocaine and tequila that suggest it\u2019s about the voyage to sobriety.<\/p>\n
If it feels like maybe you could use a laugh about now, here it comes. \u201cSuper 8\u201d is a rollicking-good country-fried road song with blazing guitar licks, a lyric that stacks punchlines end on end, and a gang-vocals-singalong chorus: \u201cDon\u2019t want to die in a Super 8 motel \/ Just because somebody\u2019s evening didn\u2019t go so well.\u201d It\u2019s just the cleansing breath you need to get to the end of an album this intense, and still a concert staple today. Another outlier follows, the spooky, sharply realized \u201cYvette,\u201d a blues ballad about a young man who\u2019s worked himself up to kill his crush\u2019s abusive father. <\/p>\n
Closer \u201cRelatively Easy\u201d presents a series of vignettes illustrating how suffering is relative; no matter how bad you may feel in this moment, there\u2019s always someone who has it worse. It also features this beautifully rendered image as Isbell eulogizes a fallen friend: \u201cRemember him when he was still a proud man \/ A vandal\u2019s smile, a baseball in his right hand \/ Nothing but the blue sky in his eyes.\u201d That triplet alone is worth the price of admission.<\/p>\n
Throughout, Isbell, who handles all the guitars here, benefits from the expert support of 400 Unit stalwarts Chad Gamble on drums and Derry Deborja on keys, with Brian Allen sitting in on bass and occasional guest harmonies from both Shires (one song) and Kim Richey (two). Dave Cobb produces with a light but expert hand, helping to polish these songs to the perfect understated shine.<\/p>\n
Like most great albums, Southeastern<\/i> is both deeply personal and grounded in a powerful sense of place and time. This is an album about life in the Southeastern part of the United States in the early 21st century\u2014mostly one specific man\u2019s life, flaws, fears, and ferocious determination to do better, recounted with unflinching honesty. It was a milestone for Isbell as a songwriter, and, if you ask me, also for Americana as a genre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":33603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10252],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-45424","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jason-isbell","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45424"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}