Jason Isbell is no more excited to be pinned down by genre than any other musical artist, but talk with him long enough and you might eventually arrive at a category he’s down with. The singer-son…
is no more excited to be pinned down by genre than any other musical artist, but talk with him long enough and you might eventually arrive at a category he’s down with.The singer-songwriter is on the phone from his home outside Nashville discussing his new album, “Reunions,” which, true to his discography, includes some deeply plaintive content. Take the track that has already become a fan favorite since he started playing it live last year, “Overseas.
“To me he’s Bruce, he’s Petty,” says manager Traci Thomas, who’s worked with him for 19 years, dating back to pre-solo days, when he was one of three singer-songwriters in the alternative Southern band Drive-By Truckers. “But radio is different today, so therefore you don’t get catapulted into more of that mainstream that used to exist. And quite honestly, he doesn’t want to be a huge superstar.
And he insists his music is actually more pop than you think it is, especially on the new record, where he tried to incorporate more of the sonic influences he picked up growing up in rural Alabama, listening to sounds on the radio that seemed to arrive from a world away. “I think on this record we got some sounds and tones and some melodic twists that reminded me of pop music when I was a kid in the ‘80s, without being nostalgic.
So much was gained with that landmark album. And maybe just a little bit was lost, too, to hear Shires tell it. She is also a member of the 400 Unit, as a fiddler and harmony singer, when she’s not off doing her solo work . Shires believes Isbell took a while to reconcile his new, clean lifestyle with his older, louder sound — and while she was one of the forces intervening to get him sober, she also wanted him to keep his swagger.
Isbell revisits the subject of sobriety in a more protracted way in the new album’s “It Gets Easier,” which takes the form of advice to a struggling friend. “This is probably the first time I’ve given it a whole song,” he says. “I did start out with the goal of writing a song for people who are in recovery but have been for a while.
Character study is Isbell’s most natural habitat, but he does veer into pointed social consciousness on a couple of songs on the new album. The opening “What’ve I Done to Help,” which has backing vocals by pal David Crosby, is a general call to compassion and action that may strike an even more particular chord now, as listeners reflect during quarantine, than it otherwise might’ve.
He’s surprised he catches so much flack for his political and social views, although that may be part-and-parcel of being a Southern gentleman, with a lot of red-state fans, who aren’t always paying attention to where he’s coming from until suddenly they are. Isbell has an analogy for the “shut up and sing” trolling he sometimes attracts.
“But that being said, I think the virus is very much a black light. To paraphrase Megan Amram, who I think is probably the funniest person on Twitter, the virus is just showing us what we were doing wrong. And it’s going to take a lot to get back to where we were. And I don’t think we’ve ever achieved anywhere near the potential as a nation that we had when we first started out.
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