When John Mellencamp sings about small-town America, it's with rosy nostalgia.
But when Alabama-raised alt-country artist Jason Isbell sings about rural life — as he does on Weathervanes, the new record from his band the 400 Unit — it's with loving criticism.
Turns out not everyone feels free to be themselves in a small town, Mellencamp! Especially given the current onslaught of drag bans, transphobic legislation and anti-gay "groomer" narrative hitting majority-conservative areas hard.
The Nashville-based Isbell played an LGBTQ+ benefit show for Tennessee Equality Project this March and frequently pushes back against bigotry online. He's less of a "love-is-love" T-shirt ally and more of a punchy tweet composer who told one homophobic fan, "I'm literally trying to keep people like you out of my audience..." Firm boundary-drawing like that irks some folks — especially in mainstream country — who label Isbell "divisive."
But complaints that he's tOo PoLiTiCaL haven't defanged the substance of his lyrics. Weathervanes (released June 9) has a graceful, grateful-for-abortion song and a track ("Cast Iron Skillet") that scratches at folksy sayings to expose sinister sentiments.
Fans of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's albums Reunions and The Nashville Sound should find plenty to savor in Weathervanes. "Miles" is glazed with a smoky Neil Young sauce, deliciously so. Though "Save the World" initially made me wince at its title, the haunting song delivers hard-hitting material:
"Somebody shot up a classroom again," sings Isbell over nervous percussion and jumpy guitar, "And when you said the cops just let 'em die / I heard the shaking in your voice." Presumably about Uvalde, the track isn't preachy or certain of solutions, but rather documents how the so-called "political" personally affects one's heart and family.
A new album isn't all Isbell's got going on this year. The former Drive-By Truckers member is also the subject of an HBO documentary, Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed (streaming on Max), that's not entirely flattering. In October, he'll appear on big screens as an actor in Martin Scorsese's highly-anticipated Killers of the Flower Moon. On set, Robert De Niro heard Isbell's Southern accent between takes and assumed the musician was method acting.
Nope, Isbell's a real hick — the kind of country boy who has no problem pointing out big problems, be they personal or national. His song "Palmetto Rose" — off 2015's Something More Than Free — uses bluesy lows and soaring, hymn-like highs to celebrate the regional beauty of Charleston, South Carolina, and acknowledge its horrific history and lingering attitudes that extend beyond the South. "I think there is a big systemic racial issue in our country," Isbell recently told Time. "I think a lot of people are pushed to the margins intentionally."
Of course not everyone wants to hear such criticism. But Isbell keeps singing, speaking out and tweeting anyway. He lifts metaphorical stones to reveal slimy cultural legacies — like white supremacy, misogyny, violence — so people can seek a better way instead of looking away. Because some lessons, no matter how deeply ingrained, are worth unlearning.
Here are five songs to help you ace your Isbell lesson before he plays the Fox on July 6.
"DEATH WISH"
WEATHERVANES, 2023
In a tweet she sent Isbell on Weathervanes' release day, fellow country-ish musician Jenny Lewis described "Death Wish" as "heavy, man." With lines like "Everybody dies, but you gotta find a reason to carry on," heavy is an understatement for this opening track.
"Death Wish" tells "the truth about love" — as poet W.H. Auden put it — even if that truth is sticky and complex. The speaker of "Death Wish," disturbed by his partner's shaky mental health and dangerous behavior, pops a hole in pop culture's manic pixie dream girl trope. To watch a loved one's inner world crumble despite attempts to relieve their suffering is a lonely kind of helplessness. "Death Wish" captures that frustration without shrugging off the situation's severity.
Isbell's subtle slant rhyme between "wild ones" and "violence" on this track proves his reputation as a poet's songwriter — in a similar camp as literary lyricist John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats — remains solid.
Whereas younger country crooner Luke Combs sings, "She's crazy / but her crazy's beautiful to me" in his tune "Beautiful Crazy," the clear-eyed, scared speaker of "Death Wish" would disagree.
"IT GETS EASIER"
REUNIONS, 2020
Remember I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, the 2002 documentary that chronicled Wilco's making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? Well, that film's director Sam Jones has a new rock doc out this year, the aforementioned Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed. The film follows Isbell and company as they record their album Reunions despite... tensions.
"Most people don't go to work with their wife," explains Isbell in the film's trailer. He's married to solo songwriter and Highwomen supergroup member Amanda Shires, who often plays fiddle in the 400 Unit. The pressures of recording strain their marital bonds, and the cameras capture that intensity.
The stressful creative endeavor also tests Isbell's decadelong abstention from alcohol: "When I have a hard day, I can't just go home and have a drink," he says. While Jones' doc digs into autobiographical backstories of beloved Reunions tracks like "Dreamsicle," it's the layered "It Gets Easier" that perhaps best represents the album.
The sober speaker of the song, having admitted he has dreams where he still drinks, assures us, "It gets easier," only to follow that optimism with the tough-truth kicker:
"But it never gets easy / I can say it's all worth it, but you won't believe me."
Those lines don't just apply to sobriety but also to romantic partnerships, writing, even cutting a record.
"ANXIETY"
THE NASHVILLE SOUND, 2017
"Sad rock" is a genre Isbell once jokingly used to describe his own sound to Variety. Well he's right, and he's in good company — Elliott Smith, Phoebe Bridgers, Death Cab for Cutie — there's something special about songs you can cry to while headbanging. Isbell's got both quiet and loud sad-rock songs.
No song encapsulates Isbell's loud sad rock quite like "Anxiety," a track that jolts to a start like a grandfather clock toppling over in a hallway.
The song's foreboding guitar pushes on as relentlessly as worry itself. Isbell and his crew managed to make a nearly seven-minute song about anxiety... that's also catchy?
While Isbell often writes in second-person ("you,") in this case the "you" he's addressing is anxiety itself: "Anxiety / How do you always get the best of me?... I can't enjoy a goddamn thing."
"HOW TO FORGET"
SOMETHING MORE THAN FREE, 2015
On track four of Something More Than Free, the song's speaker watches the "scary movie" of his own past and pleads, "Teach me how to forget / ...Teach me how to unlearn a lesson."
A thematic string that stitches through Isbell's career is the frequent contemplation of his past actions and attitudes — not in a mopey, shame-paralysis way, but with a healthy hunger for self-improvement and social evolution.
In 2019, Isbell penned a piece for Men's Health about the kind of father he strives to be (one who gladly shares domestic chores and child care) despite not seeing such models of masculinity during his Alabama upbringing in a time when "there was still a well-defined line separating the work of a mother and that of a father."
"How to Forget" is just another example of how he constantly questions handed-down roles and opts to drop or alter those traditions that turn out to be harmful.
"COVER ME UP"
SOUTHEASTERN, 2013
"Doesn't Morgan Wallen sing 'Cover Me Up?'" you might be wondering. YES, BUT JASON ISBELL WROTE IT! NEVER FORGET IT'S JASON'S SONG!
Though Isbell initially supported and defended Wallen covering his song "Cover Me Up," Isbell's tune changed in 2021 after Wallen was caught on camera yelling a racial slur. Since then Isbell's expressed anger at mainstream country for continuing to platform and praise Wallen (whose album sales actually spiked post-racist-tirade news). Isbell also announced he'd donate royalties he earned from Wallen's "Cover Me Up" version to the NAACP Nashville Branch.
Nevertheless, "Cover Me Up" remains a beautiful, crowd-pleasing track off Southeastern. It's a hot, specific love song: "So, girl, leave your boots by the bed / We ain't leaving this room / 'Til someone needs medical help / Or the magnolias bloom" *vigorously fanning myself* ♦
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Deer Tick • Thu, July 6 at 7:30 pm • $65 • All ages • The Fox Theater • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • foxtheaterspokane.org
