Credits:

Jason Isbell

Jason Isbell’s 2013 breakthrough album Southeastern was written and recorded in the wake of Isbell’s newfound sobriety, and it often sounded and felt like a musical version of the Fourth Step, in which Isbell took a long, hard look in the mirror as he came to terms with the emotional wreckage he left in his wake during his years as a drunk. By comparison, Something More Than Free, Isbell’s 2015 follow-up, plays out as the work of a man a year or so into his recovery, grateful but still working with the nuts and bolts of living as a better and more mature man while the shadows of the past remain faintly but clearly visible. The opening tune, “If It Takes a Lifetime,” is sung in the voice of a man adjusting to a quiet existence, not in love with every aspect of life as a working stiff but happy to be in a better place, and it sets the stage for a set of songs that move back and forth between past and present as Isbell