top of page

Jason Isbell- Beacon, Bristol

Writer's picture: Paul GaineyPaul Gainey

Jason Isbell is one of the best songwriters in the world right now, as evidenced by Weathervanes, his ninth studio album, and by the shows he is currently performing with an expanded 400 Unit band.


Known for his ability to distil complex human emotions into poignant, poetic songs, the North Alabama native has garnered critical acclaim and commercial success. Isbell and his band arrived at the Bristol Beacon where they devoted more than half of the 20-song set to Weathervanes.


Tackling issues such as gun violence, the opioid crisis, and women's rights all through Isbell's signature songwriting lens, songs about adult love, about change, about the danger of nostalgia and the interrogation of myths, about cruelty and regret and redemption. Some will make you cry alone in your car and others will make you sing along with thousands of strangers.


A songwriter of great depth and intelligence. His music is soulful and alive, with deceptively sophisticated lyrics about addicts, runaways, lovers and outsiders. Naturally, his vignettes of the American working class have seen him compared to Bruce Springsteen, though his quieter songs bear the traces of one of his late mentors, the master American songwriter John Prine.


This is a storyteller at the peak of his craft, observing his fellow wanderers, looking inside and trying to understand, reducing a universe to four minutes. He shrinks life small enough to name the fear and then strip it away, helping his listeners make sense of how two plus two stops equaling four once you reach a certain age - and carry a certain number of scars.


The North Alabama native possesses an incredible penchant for identifying and articulating some of the deepest, yet simplest, human emotions, and turning them into beautiful poetry through song. Isbell sings of the everyday human condition with thoughtful, heartfelt, and sometimes brutal honesty.


Four of the concert’s first five songs — “Save the World,” “King of Oklahoma,” “The Life You Chose” and “Strawberry Woman” — and nine in all came from the new album, which Isbell produced himself after a long partnership with Dave Cobb.


“Strawberry Woman,” a largely acoustic tune with harmonica, recalls better days in a relationship, “Save The World,” a summation of a parent’s fears on gun violence, begins with a flourish of colourful electric arpeggios. When his playing leaves the beat it hits you straight in the heart. “King of Oklahoma” is reminiscent of Springsteen’s songwriting on Downbound Train with its tale of love gone sour and this once ‘King’ in the last-chance saloon.


Isbell and “rock n’ roll” guitarist Sadler Vaden have a compelling onstage chemistry and the interplay between them is a sight to behold. Few songwriters can capture the lives of the lost souls who float around rootless and penniless but still hold on in hope for a better day like Isbell. There’s real tension and drama in the writing that is utterly compelling.


In the wake of 2020’s “Reunions,” the making of which was chronicled in the HBO documentary “Running with Our Eyes Closed,” Isbell wanted to produce a record that captured the 400 Unit’s often heavier live sound.


And he has succeeded — masterfully. Every member of the 400 Unit shined at points during the show, especially core members Sadler Vaden, Derry DeBorja and Chad Gamble. Will Johnson on drums and bass player Jimbo Hart added muscle to the line-up.


DeBorja shined on accordion during a lovely “Strawberry Woman”. Vaden, alternating between electric, slide and acoustic guitar, received similar showcases on an extended, free-verse jazz-like version of “Last of My Kind”, the audience hang on to every word.


“Death Wish” is a prime example of waste-free songwriting, with Isbell jumping right into relating the complications of loving someone with mental illness, and he recalls his own inability to deal in “Middle of the Morning.”


With a languid guitar intro that feels like a steamy Southern forenoon, Isbell freely recounts both maintaining his sobriety and his own failures to deal with the unexpected.


He continues to address addiction in his music, either from a personal standpoint – in sobriety-themed songs like “It Gets Easier” or “Cover Me Up” – or the observational “When We Were Close”, another Weathervanes track which addresses Isbell’s friendship with the late singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle, who died of an overdose in 2020.


The song, with big, chunky guitar, reflects a measure of survivor’s guilt over Earle who didn’t make it through the same trauma. And “Vestavia Hills,” loaded with slide guitar and accordion, comes from the perspective of an elder watching a “boy genius” fumble his way through nascent stardom and the accompanying substance abuse.


At multiple points throughout the evening, Isbell and guitarist Vaden duelled off against each other, shredding back and forth. Even the stage design – a backdrop of ruffled cloth, lit in the colours of the Gold Rush, the Great Plains and of a blood-red volcanic rock – felt meaningful.


“King of Oklahoma” was penned by Isbell while on the set of Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film, shot in the Sooner State), and, while the music has a cinematic arc it boils down to the story of a guy with a bad back and a failed marriage

And album-wrapper “Miles” is a seven-minute, tempo-changing epic that, at its heart, addresses Isbell’s most vital topic – raising a daughter in this mess of a world – with aching realism.


The folky “If We Were Vampires” is another fan favourite and the guitar riff booms through the Beacon hall.


The show ended with “Cover Me Up,” the standard — in more ways than one — closer before a three-song encore of “24 Frames,” before ending with a sublime encore of “Cast Iron Skillet’,” and “This Ain’t It,” my two favourite tracks from “Weathervanes.”.


It was a wonderful and emotionally moving night. The band heavily dished out the rock n roll all along the way, with both Jason and Sadler ripping on guitars. The last encore ‘This Ain’t It” lifted people up and sent them off into the Bristol streets having seen a display of musical storytelling from a man at the absolute peak of his powers.

0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments

Rated 0 out of 5 stars.
No ratings yet

Add a rating

PG Tips

  • alt.text.label.Twitter
  • alt.text.label.Facebook

©2023 by PG Tips. Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page