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