JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT : REUNIONS

1. What've I Done To Help
2. Dreamsicle
3. Only Children
4. Overseas
5. Running With Our Eyes Closed
6. River
7. Be Afraid
8. St. Peter's Autograph
9. It Gets Easier
10. Letting You Go

Label : Southeastern Records

Release Date : May 15, 2020

Length : 41:10

Review (AllMusic) : Some albums are made to reflect the times in which they were made, and others somehow mesh with the zeitgeist without ever planning on it. America was a nation knee-deep in uncertainty when Jason Isbell wrote and recorded 2020's Reunions, but he had no idea that the album would be released as a pandemic was sweeping the world. Thanks to COVID-19, the record emerged just as an America in quarantine was united in anxiety and frustration while at the same time struggling with a growing divide about what to do and who to believe. Reunions doesn't deal with any of these issues (and really couldn't have, given the timeline of its creation), but from the edgy fear that fuels the opening cut, "What've I Done to Help," this album is steeped in tales of folks whose lives feel unrooted, not knowing just where fate is taking them and wondering which turn they should take. The kid whose world is being turned upside down by divorce in "Dreamsicle," the friend whose choices had grim consequences in "Only Children," the broken trust of "Running With Our Eyes Closed," and "Overseas," in which the line "My love won't change a thing" feels less like assurance than resignation, all feel all too relevant at a time when just going to the grocery requires determination and a leap of faith. Even the album's most anthemic numbers seem remarkably prescient -- "Be Afraid" ("but do it anyway") at once calls for courage and respects its sometimes short supply, and "It Gets Easier" ("but it never gets easy") may be about addiction and recovery, but it can just as easily reflect the obstacles of living in a world that has very suddenly changed with no guarantee we'll ever return to what we knew.

Review (Humo) : 'Reunions' is Jason Isbells beste plaat sinds 'Southeastern' Zeker nu zijn voormalige vriend Ryan Adams nog op het #MeToo-strafbankje zit, is Jason Isbell de grootste ster van de alternatieve americana. Dat is hem gegund, maar mijn probleem met Jason - ik mag tutoyeren - is dat hij wel erg glad en gedisciplineerd is geraakt. Zeker live is hij eerder Neil Diamond dan Neil Young. Het goede nieuws: 'Reunions' is zijn sterkste plaat sinds meesterproef 'Southeastern'. Jason zit in dezelfde zone als Bruce ten tijde van 'Tom Joad' of 'Devils & Dust': akoestisch, zoekend, subtiel de ziel van Amerika blootleggend. 'What I've Done to Help', 'Dreamsicle', 'St. Peter's Autograph': ze behoren tot zijn beste songs. Heel goede plaat.

Review (Pitchfork) : The alt-country singer-songwriter's new album moves steadily and carefully, lingering on the conflicted emotions of his finely-etched tales and the band's textured, elegant understatement. The "rigorous honesty" required in recovery programs is a tenet that Jason Isbell has taken to heart. Candor has been at the core of Isbell ever since 2013's Southeastern, the record he released in the wake of his newfound sobriety and his marriage to Amanda Shires. Seven years and three albums later, sobriety remains central to Isbell's public image, as does his union with Shires, with whom he had a daughter. Isbell doesn't shy away from probing personal questions when he sits for an interview, a habit that may be a fruitful part of his recovery but nevertheless can give his songs the appearance of being straight reflections of his personal life. Reunions, the fourth album he's written and recorded since getting sober, is indeed filled with images that seem to mirror the personal life he's talked about in public. Romances are stable but not without their struggles; characters will themselves to accept their fears; whenever a child appears it's a girl, not a boy. Leading up to the album's release, Isbell upped the ante by admitting to the New York Times that its creation was fraught with tension, stemming from the pressure to deliver another strong album after making, in his own words to GQ, "three good records in a row." Buckling under his self-imposed standards, he closed himself off from Shires, who in addition to her solo career and her role in Americana supergroup the Highwomen plays fiddle in the 400 Unit, the backing band Isbell founded in 2009 who have shared album credits with the singer-songwriter since 2017's The Nashville Sound. None of this agitation can be heard on Reunions. The album moves steadily and carefully, lingering on the conflicted emotions conjured by Isbell's finely-etched tales and the band's elegant understatement. Working once again with Dave Cobb, who has produced every one of his records since Southeastern, Isbell made a conscious effort to push the 400 Unit outside their comfort zone. What they wound up with is not with an album that blares-nothing rocks with the abandon of "Cumberland Gap," a galvanizing number from The Nashville Sound-but one that's so full of texture it nearly feels painted on a canvas. Waves of cool synthesizers pulsate underneath "Only Children," whose mournful verses are accented by economical single-string runs. "Dreamsicle" unfurls with unhurried attention to detail, its bittersweet childhood memories gaining poignance as each chorus seems to be delivered with a sadder sigh. The 400 Unit can still roar-Isbell seems to steel his spine on "Be Afraid" because his group sounds tougher than their singer-but Reunions gains strength through the band's collective interplay. That communal spirit is felt throughout, adding a counterpoint to a collection of songs where Isbell ponders the kinds of minor, numbing regrets that can metastasize into self-inflicted wounds. "What Have I Done to Help" provides a keynote of sorts, its narrator gaining no comfort in his successes because he can't shake the notion they're selfish achievements. Nearly every successive song proves this doubt untrue, as Isbell focuses on humans striving to connect and largely succeed in spite of their fumbling. Not every one of Isbell's characters gives into their better nature. The narrator of "River" is tormented by his misdeeds, but the song plays like a guidepost for the rest of the record, illustrating how Isbell favors forgiveness over darkness. The closing triptych of "St. Peter's Autograph," "It Gets Easier," and "Letting You Go" emphasizes his inclination toward empathy, finding grace in love for others. "St. Peter's Autograph" is the simplest, sparest song on Reunions, an elegy for the departed friend of a loved one; it's about giving another person the space to grieve on their own terms. Where "St. Peter's Autograph" is haunted by loss, "Letting You Go" tells the tale of a father finally able to "see through the great fog of loneliness" by placing his daughter's needs over his own. Between these two songs is "It Gets Easier," which is where the heart of Reunions lies. It could be seen as an act of fellowship for fellow recovering alcoholics or Isbell could be singing directly to himself: "Last night I dreamed I'd been drinking," he sings, "I had one glass of wine/I woke up feeling fine/That's how I knew it was a dream." It's a lyric that anticipates a confession Isbell made to the New York Times, where he cops to drinking Listerine as if it was a shot of whiskey. He told Shires he held himself accountable in public, actions that jibe the song's bemused, self-aware inventory of longings for substances that are now forbidden but never forgotten. Reunions is not pure autobiography or a series of confessions to be admired for their bloodletting. Attempts to parse the details in any particular song will uncover how Isbell departs from his own history. Like all great songwriters, he uses his life as a springboard toward a hyper-reality that reveals truths a mere diary entry could not. His candor can sometimes obscure this essential fact, but his forthrightness underscores the emotional clarity of Reunions: The music wouldn't resonate so richly if he wasn't able to access his truth as vividly in song as he does in the press.

Review (Rolling Stone Magazine) : "Thought I was alone in the world," Jason Isbell sings in the first lines of the swirling seven-minute prog-roots rocker "What've I Done to Help," before adding, "until my memories gathered 'round me in the night." There's a reason Isbell chose to open Reunions, his seventh album, with the image of someone up late alone, plagued and comforted by the past. In addition to being his most crisply produced, sleek recording yet, Isbell's latest is also his most haunted and ruminative (the word "ghost' appears no less than five times). As such, Reunions feels meaningfully, if subtly, removed from the trilogy of post-sobriety records the Nashville-via-North Alabama songwriter has written over the past decade. Those LPs, 2013's Southeastern, 2015's Something More Than Free, and 2017's The Nashville Sound, told a moving story about Isbell's emergence as a husband, father, and voice of moral consciousness in the modern South. Reunions, his fourth effort with producer Dave Cobb, is the songwriter's first collection that feels like a response to, and perhaps even a gentle tinkering with, that very image. Sometimes Isbell does that by tweaking his sonic palette (less country soul, more Dire Straits guitar tones); sometimes he does that by showing cracks in the facade (see the second verse of the Seventies-rock gem "Overseas"); sometimes he does it by reducing sobriety from the poignant literary metaphor it once was on Southeastern to a mere daily reality ("It Gets Easier"); sometimes he does it by showing that there's zero difference between the personal and the political after all ("Be Afraid"); and sometimes he does that by holding up a dark mirror at himself: "Now the world's on fire," he sings, "and we just climb higher." Most often, though, Isbell kicks up dust by looking backward, and Reunions is at its best when he's doing just that. On two stunning highlights - the swirling Nashville-tuning pop of "Dreamsicle" and the delicate ballad "Only Children" - the singer reflects on childhood memories, lost friends, and foregone bohemia. Isbell has amassed several such masterpieces over the past decade alone (2013's "Cover Me Up," 2015's "24 Frames," 2017's "If We Were Vampires," to name a few). That level of songcraft has made his recent records the unintentional victims of his own high standards, where a collection of extremely good songs with a few slight misses ("St. Peter's Autograph," "Running With Our Eyes Closed") can somehow feel, however unfairly, like it merely meets expectations. Even so, Reunions is a nuanced, probing record that finds Isbell more restless than he's been since Southeastern, a rich portrait of an artist eternally searching deeper within himself. "You tell the truth enough," as he puts it on "Be Afraid," "you find it rhymes with everything."