He’s won all four Grammys he was nominated for in the last five years, although he’s never been put up for album of the year - something that might finally be rectified with “Reunions.” He caught the eye of a few more people in and out of Hollywood in 2018 when he wrote “Maybe It’s Time” for Bradley Cooper’s character to sing in “A Star Is Born.” (Although nomination-worthy, it wasn’t submitted for Oscar consideration, maybe to ensure it didn’t spoil the chances of that other “Star” song.) But going next-level isn’t really a concern, according to those around him. But it turns out there are a lot of people in the world, and if you work hard and do something well enough and get lucky, then you can find enough of them to fill up those big rooms.”ĭoes he want to go bigger? Isbell’s career growth has been incremental, with his last two albums, 2015’s “Something More Than Free” and 2017’s “The Nashville Sound,” both debuting in the top 10. It never seemed like a real thing for me, because I didn’t make pop music. But I’m sitting on my porch right now, and I still haven’t gotten used to where we live and how beautiful it is, or that I have this 1959 Les Paul here in my bedroom, and that I can have those kinds of guitars and go out and play shows with a big crew and lights. You know, there was a time when just getting up and going about my daily business took all the effort that I could muster,” he points out referring to the famously self-destructive patch that preceded “Southeastern.” “So yeah, I’m definitely surprised about all of it - although I’m not surprised by somebody like Brandi, because she works harder than humanly imaginable. And I also didn’t necessarily know if I was going to be good enough or strong enough to pull that off. “I just didn’t think that people cared as much about this kind of music anymore. He’s the first to admit it could have gone the other way. “I always figured what I do would be more of a boutique genre,” Isbell says. His audience, like Brandi Carlile‘s, isn’t taking the rise of a singer-songwriter of the old order for granted, which is why he’d be filling venues like L.A.’s Greek Theatre right about now, if the spring and summer had gone as planned. Isbell, easing into the poet-laureate rocker role at 41, seems like someone who might get to forego the ebbing part. The other recent constant, John Prine, recently felled by coronavirus complications, had a lot of ebbs and flows in his 50-year career before enjoying a nice plateau of praise and attention in the final stretch. If he’s not “the last of my kind,” to quote one of his older song titles, then he remains among the first order of those making music that feels like it gives a damn about the way we actually live and love.įor the better part of the last decade - ever since his breakthrough “Southeastern” album in 2013 - Isbell has been thought of as one of the two kings of Americana, that loose catch-all for music that has any kind of roots basis at all. The album, officially credited to Isbell and his longtime band, the 400 Unit, is full of emotional nourishment and moral fiber, dished up as quick narrative tapas. But in any case, “Reunions” is reason to feel glad all over. There may be something to that: Isbell’s songs have melancholia in their DNA, by way of their lyrical undertows or minor keys, even when his themes veer toward succor and the amps are turned consolingly up to 11. As a group document, Shires and her fiddle included, it’s Isbell’s strongest album to date.“Sad rock,” Isbell says, laughing, as if we’ve stumbled upon his true idiom at last. Inextricable from all this is the 400 Unit, as essential here as Crazy Horse or the Heartbreakers to Neil Young or Tom Petty’s great moments. ![]() Even the love songs are bruised and weary, chilled by cold truth. Isbell’s stories glint with memoir and headlines as they put human faces on head-count epidemics: mass shootings, opioid addiction, Covid-19. Its songs tremble with anger, desperation, and fear characters wrestle with regret and unhealthy appetites, struggling to cut losses in the wake of bad choices and cascading consequences. ![]() He does on Weathervanes, his brutally beautiful ninth studio album. “But they’re not out there dancin’ - I gotta get those prepositions right.” ![]() “If I was makin’ people dance, I wouldn’t sit there and waste my time,” he says, laughing cautiously. In HBO’s Jason Isbell doc, he and fellow singer-songwriter Amanda Shires seem to court marital disaster debating the best word for a lyric (spoiler: their union survives).
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