Album Review: Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit - The Nashville Sound
By Kevin Broughton
Last year was a
sonofabitch for nearly everyone we know.
-- Jason Isbell, “Hope the High Road”
A thought occurred to me while reviewing
Jason Isbell’s Something More Than Free
a couple years ago: “At some point, you run out of superlatives.” So let’s get
this out of the way. Right now, Isbell is without peer as a songwriter. He
couldn’t have a better band – and God bless him for giving The 400 Unit billing
on The Nashville Sound. Throw in a
producer – Dave Cobb – who should just buy a gadget that makes Grammy figurines,
and you have a legitimate American musical juggernaut.
And a quick word about the band. It’s proper that current
400 Unit – Sadler Vaden and Amanda Shires are newcomers since Here We Rest – gets a spot on the
marquis. When the book is written on this band, this lineup will be viewed as
the Mick Taylor-era Stones were.
There are several great songs on this record, bookended by a
pair of wholesome ballads. “The Last of My Kind” is just another great story of
an Isbell blue-collar guy, who wryly notes that some Scripture might only apply
when back home. “Something to Love,” on the back end, is a sweet, hopeful
homage to Isbell’s rural roots, a companion piece to his “God is a Working Man”
on Brother
Cobb’s Southern Family compilation.
More than one song recalls Isbell in his peak Drive By
Truckers days. (And no, they’ll never be that good again, and were never
better.) The driving intensity of “Cumberland Gap” captures the defiant malaise
of Never Gonna Change,
only in middle age. Here’s a guy who probably wishes he’d been thrown off the
Wilson Dam.
If you’re looking for other perfect B-sides, how about “If
We Were Vampires,” a sweet, morose counterweight to “Flagship,” till now
Isbell’s most tender love song?
Sadly, the album is not as good as the sum of its parts.
It’s a good but not great record, lacking the continuity and flow that made
Isbell’s previous three studio offerings so compelling. Consequently the default
focal point becomes the overtly political.
Have you ever thought about what a vile, racist country this
is? This republic that twice elected a black man president, with solid popular
and electoral majorities? No? You’re in luck, because Jason Isbell is here to
beat you over the head with it. “White Man’s World” would be better titled “White-Guilt
World.”
Granted, Isbell didn’t completely lose his mind the way his
50-something former band mates did last fall, stopping
just short of pissing on Old Glory and renouncing their citizenship in a
bid to curry favor with millennial piss-ants and Bernie Sanders-loving
losers. One wonders, though, how
many minds did they change? How many
people came around to their cop-hating, white-guilt, socialist point of view
because of DBT’s temper tantrum of an album? Likely none, though countless
bedwetting, gender fluid NPR fans got
enough affirmation to stave off being triggered for at least a day.
While Isbell employs a modicum of subtlety compared to
Cooley and Hood, “White Man’s World” is still heavy handed. And lest you think
blacks are the only oppressed people in this fascist nation: “I’m a white man
living on a white man’s street, got the bones of the red man under my feet.
Highway runs through their burial ground…”
Really?
Yeah. Step right up for self-flagellation, Cracker Boy. You
will be made to care. And never
mind that “red man” is way more than
a microaggression.
You want privilege-checking? Got some of that, too. “I’ve
heard enough of the white man’s blues, I’ve sang (sic) enough about myself” is our entry into “Hope the High Road,”
an otherwise hopeful postmortem of the 2016 election. Oh, and “Anxiety” will be
perfect fare for the “safe zones” (you know, where they exclude white people)
on the campuses of Mizzou, Harvard, Brown, etc. It’s just flat-out whiny. The crybabies
and victim-pimps will love it.
It’s a sad thing when music – something that should draw
everyone together to admire it as art for art’s sake – is politicized. More
than a couple of the artists I’ve interviewed for FTM have told me off-the-record why they avoid it. “You're 100 percent right about the music and politics thing,” one
told me recently. “I've worked really hard not to do that. The only thing that
can come from that is that you piss off half of your fan base. And you won’t
change anyone’s mind.” Indeed. But those on the Left seemed determined to
politicize every aspect of American life and culture, as we’ve seen happen in
the world of sports over the past few years.
Will Isbell lose some fans? A few. Not
this one, who hopes it’s a one-off. Still, look for plaudits from all corners:
“Jason Isbell courageously speaks his mind.” Yep. Takes a ton of courage to toe the Leftist line in song.
Ultimately, though, if you can do this, you can
do anything you want. Nice record, Jason. Wish it were better.
The Nashville Sound will be available everywhere this
Friday.