The first time most of us heard Jason Isbell was on "Outfit", his initial offering on the Drive-By Truckers' 2003 album Decoration Day, the group's first with the Alabama native. An extraordinarily perceptive and sensitive song, especially coming from a 24-year-old, "Outfit" finds a working-class father lending advice to his rock star-wannabe son, narrating along the way his own story of teenage rebellion curtailed by the adult responsibilities he ultimately came to cherish.
"Don't sing with a fake British accent" was one of dad's more memorable dictums, and regardless of how true-to-life "Outfit" may have been, it's a charge Isbell has taken to heart. During his five-plus years with the Truckers, Isbell impressively gained a songwriting reputation on par with the band's longtime principals, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Yet while Hood's unconventionally hoarse yelp attracted twang-wary indie fans and Cooley's gunslinger drawl was irresistible no matter how you felt about country, Isbell's booming, manful voice irredeemably marked him out as the least hip of the Trucker singers for the duration of his stay. Being the overweight guy in the group for a spell probably didn't help either.
Even when Isbell slimmed down considerably, however, he still retained the voice of a guy who takes ham with every meal. When Isbell sings it's not hard to picture an artless blooze belter at some sadly anonymous roadhouse. Now add in the fact that since leaving DBT he's delved much more deeply in musically treacherous blues-rock waters than his erstwhile mates. What it all amounts to is a guy who has just released his second solo record in less than two years and who nonetheless seems destined to be eternally underrated. His occasional bar-band leanings may cause some to miss that Isbell is an invigorating songwriter and one of the better lyricists of his generation.
Indeed, Isbell has had trouble catching a break. His 2007 solo debut, Sirens of the Ditch, mildly disappointed some of his staunchest admirers with its lack of historical or regional specificity, spoiled as they were by the likes of DBT songs like "Outfit", "Decoration Day", "Danko/Manuel", and "The Day John Henry Died". Yet what Isbell's achieved over the course of that album and his self-titled newest is no less admirable for its paucity of proper nouns, finding unique ways to approach sex, politics, and isolation while delivering rousing, hooky rock'n'roll. So while "Seven Mile Island" does reference a real place, and "However Long" definitely does seem to reflect an Obama-spurred sense of societal optimism, they're not the album's real lyrical standouts. That honor belongs to the ruminative "Streetlights", which shows us an itinerant musician calling home from some faraway bar, and especially "Soldiers Get Strange", an utterly spellbinding snapshot of a serviceman who comes home from overseas and finds a return to marital sex and "toeing civilian lines" to be a psychological impossibility.
Many of the songs on Isbell's sophomore release don't necessarily aim for (or achieve) such profundity, yet they still compel through sheer verve and Isbell's unwillingness to let an unhip sound or idea discourage him. Sure, "Blue" sounds like Los Lonely Boys filtered through RHCP's "Under the Bridge", but it's still a damn fine song, Isbell showing off his ability to at least be evocatively oblique when he's not exactly hitting his lyrical mark. And if you're going to ape 1960s Stax soul, you might as well dive in headfirst like Isbell does on "No Choice in the Matter", an unrepentant throwback that nonetheless nails the warm horns and spindly guitar sound of a classic Otis session perfectly. Sometimes all that's needed is a big, singalong-ready chorus-- they're never as easy to craft as you think, yet Isbell delivers on "Sunstroke", the barnburning "Good", and especially "Cigarettes and Wine". The latter is just as much about faded male vitality as it is sex, drugs, and drink, and is hence destined to be a crowd-pleaser with those ruefully eyeing receding hairlines and spreading paunches. Yep, the only "hip" here is the aching one that's sooner or later going to need replacing.
