Jason Isbell - One Chord To Another

Year 2011 Round Up Part 2: Jason Isbell, Austin Lucas, Lauderdale, Brown Bird

December 5, 2011 No Comments

Continuing with the highlights of the year 2011. I started with the unhurried side of music (like Slowcoustic describes it). Now I’m kicking it up a a tiny notch, but the quality remains equally high. Still very much in the folk, country and americana zone, but don’t worry. Some pop hits will be coming up as well (even though that “finnish pop site” slogan is getting a little questionable these days). Like previously mentioned. The full best songs/albums/reissues lists coming up late december. Without further pointless crap. Here’s again four great songs from the year 2011.

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit: Alabama Pines

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCMsUQmS0Bo]

Austin Lucas: Thunder Rail

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wwKSl86pXs]

Lauderdale: Stars Fell

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jvlcLV6Yns]

Brown Bird: Bilgewater

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1zbePIN5DQ]

Review: Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit – Here We Rest

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit: Here We Rest (Lightning Rod, 2011)

The previous Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit album had 3-4 fantastic songs, but as a whole I didn’t love it that much. This is not the case with Here We Rest. Now Jason gets pretty much everything right and releases an album that is full of wonderful songs. Ok, to me the quality drops a tiny bit after the first six songs, but this is mostly because the first half is perfect and contains pretty much the best music released during the year. This is captivating, soulful and warm american music with insightful lyrics and it proves that Jason Isbell can still write equally great (if not even better) songs than during those years with the Drive-By Truckers. In fact, I think Here We Rest is the best album both Drive-By Truckers or Jason Isbell have released since they parted ways. And yeah, I know, it’s stupid, pointless to even get into that subject. It’s not a damn competition and we are just damn lucky that we have songwriters such as Isbell, Cooley and Hood all continuously writing wonderful songs.

Listen to Alabama Pines:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxv0g-6m3GY]

Jason Isbell Website