By the time this album was coming together, 28-year-old Jason Isbell had been a member of Drive-By Truckers for six years, playing a supporting role in the Southern rock \/ alt-country outfit co-founded by fellow singer-songwriter-guitarists Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. In that time the North Alabama native had written and sung eight well-received songs for the group and there was likely a recognition by all parties that his talents might one day outgrow the band.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, three months before his 2007 debut solo album Sirens Of The Ditch<\/i> was released, Hood announced Isbell\u2019s amicable departure from the Drive-By Truckers. And while Isbell\u2019s well-documented drinking and drugging may have factored in, it\u2019s hard not to speculate on album co-producer Hood\u2019s thoughts as he sat in the control room hearing these songs take shape. My best guess: \u201cDamn, that\u2019s a really good song. And another. And another. And\u2014f**k, if I\u2019m any kind of friend to this guy, I need to tell him he shouldn\u2019t be in our band anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n
Or something like that.<\/p>\n
Sirens<\/i> in fact deploys much of the then-current DBT lineup as session players supporting Isbell, with bassist Shonna Tucker (Isbell\u2019s soon-to-be-ex-wife) and drummer Brad Morgan playing on the bulk of these tracks, while Hood adds guitar and piano to a couple and serves as co-producer with Isbell on the majority. The result is an album that\u2019s as musically muscular as DBT in places, but shows how Isbell was already well on his way to establishing his own thoughtful, rangy, rootsy style as a solo performer. <\/p>\n
The highlights here are many, but three stand out in particular. Kickoff cut and lead single \u201cBrand New Kind Of Actress\u201d is a chunky, propulsive rocker with a clever first-person lyric narrating the story of actress Lena Clarkson\u2019s fatal entanglement with producer Phil Spector. If that sounds tricky to pull off, it is, but Isbell succeeds admirably in framing it as a cautionary tale about ambition and celebrity.<\/p>\n
Midway through, \u201cDress Blues\u201d is a stately, haunting number about a young soldier\u2019s death, with Isbell declaring that \u201cNobody here could forget you \/ You showed us what we had to lose.\u201d The lyric is magnificent and remarkable in its shadings, honoring the sacrifice while questioning the need for it to have happened at all. Down towards the tail end, \u201cShotgun Wedding\u201d delivers a pumping rocker that\u2019s also one of the strangest love songs ever, in which a shy outcast longs to marry the pregnant, abused girl he has a silent crush on; it’s a small-town Southern Gothic set to Isbell and Hood\u2019s punchy guitar and piano hooks.<\/p>\n
The rest of the album finds Isbell playing with some of his favorite tropes and musical flavors; there\u2019s DBT-like heavy blues-rock (\u201cTry\u201d); a country-rock character study (\u201cThe Magician\u201d); and an acoustic ballad ruminating on the evils of war and demagoguery (\u201cThe Devil Is My Running Mate\u201d). As solid as the musical foundation of all these songs is, it\u2019s the lyrics that jump out, as on the country-blues Dylan homage \u201cDown In A Hole\u201d: \u201cStanding in the window with his tongue hanging out \/ Like the king of something evil in a yearlong drought \/ With a dirty white suit, a big white hat \/ A bullet in his pocket no matter where he’s at \/ He’s trouble, but ain’t we all?\u201d<\/p>\n
On the classic-rock-flavored \u201cGrown\u201d\u2014source of the album\u2019s title\u2014it\u2019s the specificity of the references that elevate the song: \u201cLast night I heard the distant hum \/ Of another damn hurricane \/ Oh Sunny, tell me where you’ve gone \/ Are you still dancing to Purple Rain<\/i>?\u201d It\u2019s a nice touch in a song that sounds like it\u2019s about losing his virginity.<\/p>\n
Quality lines like that are in fact sprinkled through the whole album like spice in a good gumbo: \u201cI lost a friend, it felt like five \/ A man who wouldn’t compromise \/ I’ll think of him on New Year’s Day \/ And do the Chicago promenade\u201d (\u201cChicago Promenade\u201d). Or maybe: \u201cSo say your last goodbye \/ Make it short and sweet \/ There ain’t no way for you to fly \/ With her hanging on your feet\u201d (\u201cIn A Razor Town\u201d).<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the most autobiographical song here, \u201cHurricanes And Hand Grenades,\u201d a classicist barroom weeper drenched in Hammond and bluesy licks that finds Isbell cataloguing his own flaws, mainly whiskey, cigarettes, and \u201cthe white.\u201d It doesn\u2019t dig nearly as deep as his 2013 getting-sober album Southeastern<\/i> would, but it\u2019s still an honest and perceptive piece of work.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The most impressive thing about Sirens Of The Ditch<\/i>\u2014other than Isbell\u2019s obvious talents as a lyricist\u2014is the performances. Even on his very first outing as a solo artist, Isbell manifests a kind of quiet swagger, a laidback-yet-intense energy that infuses every song with weight and purpose. And while a few of the arrangements here feel a little underdeveloped, and Isbell\u2019s lyrics would grow deeper and braver in the years to come, he did some fine, fine work here\u2014more than enough to make it obvious that his future lay as a solo artist rather than the third wheel in someone else\u2019s band.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10252],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46541","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jason-isbell","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46541","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=46541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46541"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}