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BEST OF 2015

MAGNET’s #24 Album Of 2015: Jason Isbell’s “Something More Than Free”

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Jason Isbell’s fifth solo album—and his second since kicking booze—has the bones of a fairly conventional singer/ songwriter outing. It’s nuanced, more prone to the soft than the loud dynamic, and decidedly more subtle and measured than 2013’s Southeastern. But it’s just that rocksolid, sober grounding that gives Something More Than Free its extraordinary heart and intestinal fortitude. It’s the not-always-pleasant sound of a lucid, intelligent, (daresay) God-fearing dude taking stock of the destruction his addiction has wrought, trying to make amends with those he hurt, and appreciate the here and now, all while acknowledging that he’s far from perfect and may yet stumble off the straight-and-narrow. Something rarely rocks out—the only obvious single is the mid-tempo “24 Frames,” in part about the perils of his former life, drink in hand (“When everything you built for show goes up in flames, in 24 frames”). That Isbell is mature beyond his years still holds true 15 years after he first hit the road with Drive-By Truckers. Now, at 36, he’s found an honest, hardearned groove that should carry him through to that inevitable midlife crisis. —Hobart Rowland