Graham Reid | | 2 min read
Crimson and Clay
Recently divorced after a decade of marriage to bandmate Amanda Shires and clearly still feeling all the various emotions which such a life-changing event can wrought, singer-songwriter Jason Isbell puts aside his 400 Unit band and -- for the first time since leaving Drive-By Truckers almost two decades ago -- sits down with just an acoustic guitar.
The result, recorded over less than a week in New York's Electric Lady Studio, are these 11 refined and personal songs.
At the most wounded he offers the moving Eileen over a simple finger pick: “Started out like it always starts, try to hold the hunger back, you don't anticipate a broken heart . . . It ends like it always ends, someone crying on the phone. You tell each other you can still be friends but you both know you’re on your own”.
Isbell here also deals with his own unwelcome emotions: “my own behaviour was a shock to me”.
On Gravelweed he opens with “I wish that I could be angry, punch a hole in the wall, drink a fifth of cheap whisky and call and call and call. But that ain't me anymore babe. Never was to tell the truth. I just saw it in a movie and thought that's what I was supposed to do . . .”
These are hard truths delivered with clarity and without apology.
But there is also the other side to acknowledge, that there were times of deep love.
On the jaunty title track he sings “I love my love, I love her mouth . . . I love the way she sees the child inside the man”.
There's a lightness too: the opener Bury Me has a timeless Appalachian quality (“I ain't no outlaw but I've been inside”) and everywhere there's the refined emotional depth of Guy Clark, John Prine and Townes Van Zandt.
But when he feels bitterness he lets it run, as on True Believer: “All your girlfriends say I broke your fucking heart and I don't like it . . . I can't remember my dreams, I guess it could be the meds but the sound of you screaming won't get out of my head . . .”
However there is much beauty, forgiveness and passion here and the album ends on note of acceptance and the hint of a new love in Wind Behind the Rain: “We don't need all the answers yet, I'm sure time will change me some. You see what I could become . . .”
The kinds of truths this album distills down are impossible to fake and these songs are sometimes flecked with humour about life's lessons, as on Don't Be Tough: “Don't be shitty to the waiter he's had a harder day than you. Don't make babies stay up later just because they're so damn cute. Don't be tough until you have to to, let love knock you on your arse”.
Words of wisdom in song from someone whose been through it, heard a bar band play Kid Charlemagne with a fucked up solo (Open and Close) and is seeing his failings and the possibilities of the future with clarity.
And who has crafted it all into a terrific album.
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You can hear this album at digital outlets. It is available on CD and vinyl at Southbound Records here.
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