Jason Isbell Southeastern

Jason Isbell's Southeastern is as fine of singer/songwriter album that's come out in a long while. This self-deprecating recovery album is poignant without being preachy. He carries his writing exactly like a man telling a matter-of-fact, no frills experience.  And he does this with great aplomb as those have who have gone before him. Isbell's mostly stripped down songs draw easy comparisons to a southern Springsteen and as a friend pointed out to me not too long ago when recommending the album, Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams. Isbell started out with a not so brief tenure with the great Drive-by Truckers. I knew the major core of songwriters early on in DBT and with the advent of Decoration Day and The Dirty South with songs like Outfit on Decoration Day; The Day John Henry Day and Goddamn Lonely Love on The Dirty South; I knew a distinct writing voice had arisen in this classic Southern Rock Band. When Isbell struck out on his own and heard the first inkling of how good his solo career was going to be with Dress Blues on his fine album Sirens of The Ditch I was purely sold and knew the next generation of talented poets was safely in Isbell's hands.

The opening 3/4 time song Cover Me Up starts the heartbreak of chasing away your lover with your lack of sobriety and the hope somehow that you can keep it up and maybe she'll stay around. He easily determines she won't, if he doesn't straighten up. This becomes the theme of the album, regret without sounding maudlin or hairshirt-tugging grief. It's hard to pull off and I think that is the genius of the album. The next song on deck is the breezy southern rocker Stockholm which if listened to too closely let's you know what's ahead on the first line of "I've heard songs make a Georgia man cry." Live Oak, with its a cappella opening and continued lamentation sounds if it could have been discovered as a long lost folk song or 'murder ballad' from a Lomax field recording. With its backcountry loss or confusion on the lyric "there's a man who walks beside her, he is who I used to be, and I wonder if she sees him and confuses him with me." Powerful stuff about train robbin' and killin'.

Songs That She Sang in the Shower  is probably the most earnest 'lost love' song on the album to me. Also written in 3/4 time, he explains the loss and duties of sobriety with these lyrics

"In a room by myself, looks like I'm here with the guy that I judge worse than anyone else. So I pace, and I pray, and I repeat the mantras that might keep me clean for the day".

"And the songs that she sang in the shower are stuck in my mind like 'Yesterday's Wine', like 'Yesterday's Wine' and experience tells me that I'll hear them again without thinking of them, without thinking of them".

The alt-country rave up Super 8 gives us much needed break with a nice southern fried rocker. All the trappings of endless touring, drinking, and jail, you can imagine this little ditty being played at someplace like the Golden Spike in Kirksville, MO. Rednecks with longnecks should love this priceless boot scootin' boogie tune. 

The outro of this excellent album is Relatively Easy, thematically pretty tough song. Completely hidden by the uptempo music supported with lyrics like,

"are you having a long day, everyone you meet rubs you the wrong way, dirty city streets smell like an ashtray morning bells are ringing in your ear."

"I lost a good friend, at Christmastime when folks go off the deep end, his woman took the kids and he took Klonopin, enough to kill a man twice his size. Not for me to understand. Remember him when he was still a proud man, a vandal's smile, a baseball in his right hand, nothing but the blue sky in his eyes.

"I should say, I keep your picture with me everyday. The evenings now are relatively easy. And here with you there's always something to look forward to. My lonely heart beats relatively easy. 

I regret not buying this album on vinyl because the songs are perfectly sequenced, rolling perfectly into each other. This is a testament, I am assuming, to Dave Cobb's fine work at the helm as producer. It's very much like a 47 minute video covering the human condition that singer/songwriters of worth and rank have done so well for so long. I am very happy that such a fine young torchbearer has come to state the difference between youth and maturity, most adeptly I might add. He has come along to tell us about ourselves while he tells us about himself. This deeply personal testament to licking your demons and proving that you don't have to be a drunk or an addict to write great songs also proves it helps to have something in your past like that to draw upon. 

Southeastern should be on everybody's top 10 at the end of the year. Right now it's my 'Number 1' and I don't think anything's going to knock it off.