Checking out new albums

Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit “Reunions” Southeastern/Thirty Tigers

★★★1/2 Jason Isbell established himself as a songwriter of emotional depth way back on 2003’s “Decoration Day,” the first of three albums he recorded as a member of the Drive-By Truckers. And ever since he got clean and sober on 2013’s “Southeastern,” the Americana guitarist and bandleader has been producing one forthright, finely wrought solo album after another.

“Reunions” maintains that winning streak. Isbell has taken pains to point out that the songs are for the most part imagined, rather than autobiographical. It’s tempting to doubt him, in part because a few have obvious roots in his own experience.

“It Gets Easier” (“but it never gets easy”) is about the ongoing battle to lay off the bottle. And “Letting You Go” is a heartrending parent’s lament. Isbell and his wife, 400 Unit fiddle player Amanda Shires, have a 4-year-old daughter.

But the real reason it’s hard to get your head around the idea that Isbell’s songs aren’t about Isbell is that they feel so completely lived-in, with telling details that ring true. “Poison oak to poison ivy, dirty jokes that blew right by me,” he sings in “Dreamsicle,” about a 14-year-old boy watching his parents’ marriage crumble. “Mama curling up beside me, crying to herself.”

Produced by longtime associate Dave Cobb, “Reunions” has a fuller, thicker sound than its recent predecessors. That rocked-out approach serves Isbell well when he gets his dander up, as on “What Have I Done To Help,” which features harmony vocals by David Crosby, and “Be Afraid.”

Those songs are exhortations to the world at large, urging others to prioritize the common good and speak up.

But they also work as notes from the artist to himself to continue to face his fears and hold himself to the highest standard.