Review: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit Are At Their Clearheaded Best on "Weathervanes"
The veteran alt-country rocker spins classic, complex tales and delivers the year's best album to date
A preface: I was predisposed to love this album.
I first heard of Jason Isbell through the Drive-by Truckers’ “Never Gonna Change,” which ended up on my first iPod playlist after my dad showed it to me on car rides to the beach and home from church. I was around 10 years old, too young to really comprehend Isbell’s words, but I was captivated by the roaring guitars and the simple yet defiant chorus (We ain’t never gonna change / We ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong / We ain’t never gonna change / So shut your mouth and play along”).
I came to find out that Isbell had departed DBT for a solo career — and to sober up — before I began listening to the band, and I don’t think I comprehended his popularity until I started taking a greater interest in music in 2017. I always associated Isbell as a member of the Truckers, so I only checked out his solo work in passing until that point.
Of course, I quickly fell hard for his songs. It’s easy to see why.
Isbell has conquered the sports writer demographic with his “smart words and loud guitars,” as ESPN writer Wright Thompson put it. Writers are naturally attracted to good writing, and Weathervanes has some of Isbell’s best.
Take “King of Oklahoma,” the album’s second track and an instant-classic in Isbell’s canon.
It follows a man in the downward spiral of an addiction, his futile attempts to erase back pain caused by a laborious job resulting in his wife leaving, his bills piling up and his body no healthier than it was before. The trick, as it’s always been with Isbell, is how he doesn’t look down on anyone in this situation.
Isbell is a master at portraying the nuances of working-class American life and the messy complexity of personal situations, something he honed in his early days with the Truckers. This man is down on his luck, but by the final time he says, “She used to make me feel like the King of Oklahoma / Nothing makes me feel like much of nothing anymore,” you can’t help but empathize as he’s realized what he’s become.
Isbell wrote the song while working on Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Western Killers of the Flower Moon, and the sweeping melody provided by the 400 Unit evokes the wide-open prairies that the song’s subject spends his life ambling through.
The band as a whole does some of its best work ever on Weathervanes, especially on more rocking cuts like lead single “Death Wish,” the topical “Save the World” and the Justin Townes Earle tribute “When We Were Close.” While the group’s sound doesn’t differ much from past projects, this is the first Isbell album of original material without Dave Cobb on production since 2011’s Here We Rest.
As such, there’s a few more moments where the 400 Unit gets to show off its tight musicianship, including an Allman Brothers-like jam on “This Ain’t It” and the seven-minute, multi-part closer “Miles.”
There’s still room for gentle acoustics. “Strawberry Woman” is a sweet ode to the beginning of a relationship, while the tradition-challenging “Cast Iron Skillet” and desperate “Volunteer” veer back into darker territory.
But the spotlight on an Isbell record always comes back to the lyrics. He frequently chronicles, whether implicitly or explicitly, his attempts to be a better man, husband and father as he faces his demons, a journey he started 10 years ago on the landmark Southeastern.
It crops up again on Weathervanes, most notably on “Middle of the Morning” (I've tried to be grateful for my devils and call them by their names / But I'm tired, and by the middle of the morning I need someone to blame).
That’s what makes Isbell such a compelling writer, and why I first grabbed on even as a child. His stories are both epic tales and layered puzzles that present a frank view of real life, his words immediately impactful even if it’s difficult to fully comprehend everything on first listen.
Weathervanes is no exception. And it’s what made me predisposed to love it.
Listen to the album here: