\u00a0\u201cI’m too scared to ask the right questions \/ And too tired to fill the right shoes\u201d
— \u201cThe Blue\u201d by Jason Isbell<\/i><\/p>\n
Things seem a lot better for him now, but back in 2008, Jason Isbell was not in a good place.<\/p>\n
The North Alabama singer-songwriter-guitarist\u2019s 2007 solo debut Sirens Of The Ditch<\/i> was made with extensive help from his then-bandmates in Drive-By Truckers, but by the time he began work on this follow-up, his marriage to DBT bassist Shonna Tucker had ended and his drinking and drugging definitely hadn\u2019t. He was now truly on his own and faced with the task of assembling a completely new backing band. <\/p>\n
The group that first came together here under the banner of The 400 Unit\u2014the nickname of a hospital psychiatric ward in the area where Isbell grew up\u2014included Derry DeBorja on keys, Jimbo Hart on bass, and Browan Lollar on guitar. Behind the kit Isbell enlisted the drummer from one of his favorite bands, Matt Pence of Centro-Matic, who also co-produced and mixed the album. <\/p>\n
The results are both impressive and disappointing. Impressive, because Isbell\u2019s gifts as a songwriter\u2014evident from the start of his tenure in DBT\u2014can be heard continuing to develop and mature here. Disappointing, because that development is still incremental at this point; he\u2019s still working entirely in characters, still keeping his own heart mostly at a distance from his audience, and the sometimes gauzy and too-often subversive production distracts from rather than amplifies the impact of these songs.<\/p>\n
There are strong moments, to be sure. Opener \u201cSeven-Mile Island\u201d conjures up an entire imagined snow globe of a world populated by down-on-their-luck characters at the end of their respective ropes, even as the steady heartbeat of drums-slide-banjo-keys interplay grounds the song, giving it almost hymnal quality. It\u2019s an evocative opener whose potential as a launching pad feels undercut by \u201cSunstroke,\u201d a gentle dirge about a lost couple in a claustrophobic relationship who \u201cmake little fools of ourselves\u201d over and over again. Pence\u2019s adventurous drumming fosters a lost-and-spacey vibe that leads to a crushing final couplet: \u201cI never meant to get bored with you \/ But I never meant to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood\u201d is another one that feels like it fell short of its potential, a thrummy, driving rocker on which Isbell\u2019s vocal feels contradictorily rather low-key, despite a lyric that points toward the more confessional bent of his later work: \u201cI can’t make myself do right \/ On Friday night \/ When all these shadows they get bigger and bigger in the light.\u201d If only the outro hadn\u2019t committed the double fault of first flying out of control and then fading out. The downbeat theme continues as \u201cCigarettes And Wine\u201d delivers a resonant slow blues about heartache helping you sink all the way to the bottom.<\/p>\n
The middle of the album is where some of the best material lies. First they turn it up for the propulsive \u201cHowever Long,\u201d a dark-yet-ultimately-optimistic rocker about the state of the nation that Isbell essays with authority (a stance he would return to memorably on \u201cHope The High Road” almost a decade later). Then \u201cCoda\u201d offers a hazy yet stately instrumental intermission before we dive into \u201cThe Blue,\u201d where Isbell turns the camera on himself and comes close to baring his soul: \u201cI’m too scared to ask the right questions \/ And too tired to fill the right shoes\u2026 Hold me down when I can’t find a drink \/ Dance, so I don’t have to think.\u201d Its almost funereal tone is unfortunately undermined by the inclusion of a ticking metronome in the mix that\u2019s distracting and takes away from an otherwise gripping song.<\/p>\n
The final four are a mixed bag. \u201cNo Choice In The Matter\u201d is slow-and-steady country-blues ballad about a love triangle, augmented by a Muscle Shoals-ey horn section\u2014which sounds pretty good on paper, but the song itself never quite gels. The much stronger \u201cSoldiers Get Strange\u201d is a clever, jangly number told through the eyes of a soldier feeling the distance between his military existence and the civilians who used to be part of his life. <\/p>\n
\u201cStreetlights\u201d might be the most autobiographical number here, a rambling tune about a road warrior drinking away an evening alone: \u201cAnd the streetlights help a little, but they’re barely half alive \/ I don’t feel much like walking and I sure as hell can’t drive.\u201d Elegiac closer \u201cThe Last Song I Will Write\u201d narrates a surrealistic, melancholy dream while the music reaches for the sky.<\/p>\n
Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit<\/i> was re-released in 2019 with a fresh mix by Dave Cobb, producer of all of Isbell\u2019s later albums, and a bonus track: a ringing, exuberant cover of Big Star\u2019s \u201cWhen My Baby\u2019s Beside Me.\u201d As you might anticipate, the newer mix substantially improves the sonic quality of the album, gaining sharpness and separation while losing most of the distracting quirks that undermined the original (including that metronome).<\/p>\n
It would be three years before Isbell delivered another album, 2011\u2019s somewhat more confident Here We Rest<\/i>. You want a self-titled album debuting a new band to be definitive in some way, but Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit<\/i> can\u2019t measure up to that mark; it\u2019s an album sprinkled with strong moments and signs of potential that today stands mostly as an early signpost on a long road that Isbell has traveled many miles down in the years between.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10037],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-46565","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jason-isbell-and-the-400-unit","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46565","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=46565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46565"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}