JASON ISBELL & THE 400 UNIT

Weathervanes SOUTHEASTERN 8/10 Former Trucker still striving to exceed his own expectations. By Andrew Mueller

JASON ISBELL’S rst couple of solo albums a er leaving Drive-by Truckers in 2007 had their moments – “Dress Blues”, “Streetlights” – but also sounded like someone trying to teach himself a trade he wasn’t altogether convinced he was cut out for: the hammer landed on the thumb nearly as o en as the nail. But the period since Isbell hit his stride properly on 2011’s Here We Rest now demands to be considered one of the great decades (and a bit) assembled by a solo artist. It’s not fanciful, at this point, to invoke Bruce Springsteen from Born To Run to Tunnel Of Love, or Warren Zevon from his self-titled second LP to Sentimental Hygiene.

Weathervanes is another imperious demonstration of Isbell’s signature ability to simultaneously project con dence and vulnerability, both musically and lyrically. In many respects, it’s Isbell doing more of what we well understand that he does: these are stories of the lonely, confused and frightened, Isbell himself occasionally among them, set to supremely articulate country soul, delivered with the kind of voice – as both singer and writer – which was always likely to acquire greater gravitas as its owner grew older.

It is replete with what we might now think of as Isbellisms. There is the fondness for playing with place names, as heard on the Springstonian “King Of

Oklahoma” (“She’s going back to Bixby/ Tired of tryin’ to x me”). There is the tantalising diversion into unregenerate boogie, “This Ain’t It” stepping into the part previously played by “Super 8” and “24 Frames”. There are the plots that might have been plucked from the pages of yellowing diaries or local newspapers: the terri ed teenagers trying to correct a mistake in “White Beretta”, and the John Prine-ish “Volunteer”, in which Isbell

aunts his reporter’s knack for the crisp opening line with “Daddy worked hard/ Mama worked harder/propped up on pain, pills and pride”.

Isbell also continues – as do Drive-by Truckers – to step up against certain views which might be assumed to be at large in the audience of a country-ish singer from Alabama. “Save The World” is, at one level, a protest song railing at the bizarre trade-o that many of Isbell’s fellow Americans have made, to value a particular narrow interpretation of a 232-year-old constitutional amendment above the safety of schoolchildren. But it’s smarter and deeper than that, digging into the fear that congeals the heart of even the most reasonable parent, Isbell wondering, “Can we keep her here at home instead?”

It’s accompanied by an appropriately feverish ri , time kept by nervous snare, before cresting with what at least sounds like the sadly lesser-heard harmonising twin guitar solo.

“When We Were Close” is an elegy for the late Justin Townes Earle, who had a previous cameo in Isbell’s “New South Wales”, a semi-rueful account of a dissolute Australian tour. This sequel – perhaps counterintuitively – is a more raucous, even exuberant a air, amidst which Isbell negotiates a balance between a ection and anger, while juggling an amount of survivor’s guilt (“You were bound for glory and grown to die/but why wasn’t I?”).

He’s as powerful as ever in lower gears too: “If You Insist” is a wry summary of a moribund romance, Isbell’s past-caring barbs (“I’m too tired to get excited/and I’m too old to be ashamed”) o set by Amanda Shires’ weeping ddle. “Vestavia Hills”, named a er the fancy Birmingham, Alabama, suburb in which its narrator is now comfortably ensconced, is an ambiguous reproach of an up-and-comer by a rock’n’roll aristocrat who sounds unsure whether he’s worried or jealous; it rides one of those patent Isbell choruses which manages to be both anthemic and understated.

None of which is to suggest that Isbell is – like his correspondent in Vestavia Hills – phoning anything in from recline atop his laurels: Weathervanes has all the twitch and twinkle of an artist still striving to exceed his own expectations. Aside from everything else, it contains at least one signpost towards intriguing further horizons: opening track “Death Wish” recalls a few previous mid-paced character studies of the vexatious ex who cannot or will not help themselves – it might almost be a companion to “How To Forget” – but is shrouded in sumptuous strings which ease Isbell closer than he has been yet to Billy Sherrill-style countrypolitan balladry. On the strength of “Death Wish”, it has to be hoped there will be more where it came from.