STANDALONE POST: When The Notes Mean More - 1Jul25
Album and song reviews with a sense of purpose
Initially, I had planned on album and song reflections being part of the longer form blog entries. But I’m quickly discovering I’m listening to new music at a far faster clip than any other activity. And that music definitely creates all sorts of thoughts and feelings that are motivation to write at a faster clip as well.
So, these When the Notes Mean More I think at this point will be just dropping at random after I listen to an album. Sometimes that will be standalone, sometimes part of a longer blog. Music that moves you shouldn’t wait to be recognized. And I just listened to an unbelievable album. Now that you’ve heard my manifesto, let’s cut right to it.
The album
Something More Than Free by Jason Isbell.
Like my experience with The Naked and Famous, I had only heard and fell in love with a single song by Jason Isbell. “How To Forget” was an Americana ballad at its best. It was clear that Jason Isbell was effectively a “poet of the common man” who could turn life situations that are rooted in deep sadness and trouble and put them to beautiful words overlayed on a country music melancholy like very few artists out there. If one song could contain such weight, it was clearly time to give more of his catalogue a good, long listen. So, I decided to listen to Something More Than Free the same reflection I have done with some other great albums as part of this blog.
The review
Country music is both an antique (in the best way possible) and a contemporary/modern way of storytelling. It harkens back to times of the past in its sound but speaks to life’s challenges in a way that is timeless. Modern challenges can be addressed with timeless recounting of those lessons. Something More Than Free is that modern take on life’s tribulations with an old-time sound that is blanketed in familiarity.
This record, to me, is about living in, and sometimes being stuck in one’s past. Whether that’s being stuck in past trauma or past reminiscence, our past and the places we come from are part of us. We cannot untie ourselves from those things, we just incorporate them into our total being.
“It Takes a Lifetime,” with an old-time country ballad at its heart, is the simultaneous fatigue and resolve we have from being stuck in a life you don’t want, especially when transitioning to getting your life together after a relationship/marriage ends. There is a daily grind he repeatedly refers to that is hard to get through until you “grow up” from that experience, which according to Isbell, can take a lifetime.
And I can’t recall a day when I didn’t want to disappear
But I keep on showin’ up
Hell bent on growing up
If it takes a lifetime.
For all the fatigue, there is hope and resolve. At the end of the song he beckons:
Our day will come if it takes a lifetime
If it takes a lifetime to get over a broken heart, it only takes nearly an instant for a life to change. In “24 Frames,” a focus is brought to how everything can change in the course of a day, or the 24 hours that are referred to here as “frames.” Sometimes people may think of everything in life as God’s plan, but there is an extreme randomness and abruptness that makes the narrator question that supposed predestiny:
You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built its all for show, goes up in flames
In 24 frames
I believe the above song won a Grammy for Best Roots Rock song. I can see why. With or without an award, I’d love this song. Lines of realizing the fragility of everything over a honky-tonk guitar that just takes you home.
This record tends to use places and objects that I assume Isbell may have had in his town growing up as ways to create the setting of particular tracks. Houses, hotels, cars, cowboy boots and everything in between. The softly sung “Flagship” mentions just about it all as he paints the picture of his past that he is telling his current love. I think there was a girl with whom things went down in flames within his time back in the town he grew up in, and he doesn’t want to repeat those mistakes, but instead have his new love now become the “flagship of the fleet.” Maybe this is the happy end to the seemingly day-in, day-out grind of “It Takes a Lifetime.”
”How To Forget,” a sweetly sung Americana classic that drew me to Jason Isbell, continues that conversation about his past love. Though now it is talking to that past love whom things didn’t end as he or she had hoped.
Now that I found someone
Who makes me wanna live
Does that make my leaving harder to forgive?
A hard set of words to swallow, especially if you are the one Isbell is speaking to. Though these words of painful feelings somehow sound a bit sweeter with Jason Isbell’s voice, like he’s letting her down easy.
There are times he looks deeper into his past during the course of Something More Than Free. “Children of Children” pure poetry at every turn, expressing how abruptly upending teenage pregnancy and childbirth can be on a relationship, and perhaps leading to clues as to why the love was seemingly destined to fail in the first place.
17 ain’t old enough to reason with the pain
How could we expect to stay in love
When neither knew the meaning of the difference of sacred and profane
Its one of those songs with a building orchestral symphonic sound layered in a country guitar. Melancholy in music at its finest. “The Life You Chose” is wishing that broken love of his past well or wondering if she is doing OK. Are you living the life you chose? Are you living the life that chose you?” He’s not certain, but one of those options is the truth, or maybe both are the truth. You choose your life, or it chooses you. Maybe both of those things can be the same.
If the album up to this point looks at his past, the album title track “Something More Than Free” represents a turn towards his present and future, something that stays for the rest of the album. There is a sense of gratefulness for a hard life embedded within the song. “What I’m working for is something more than free, And I don’t think on why I’m here or where it hurts, I’m just lucky to have the work.” Everything one has been through making a better man… Hard not to stand behind that type of ethic.
The next 3 tracks: “Speed Trap Town,” “Hudson Commodore,” and “Palmetto Rose,” are all nostalgia. Isbell’s nostalgia that is. “Speed Trap Town” seems to be referring to visiting a dying father, once a policeman, who is still in the town he grew up in. Isbell recognizes all of those places and objects he always references to see how much his life has changed. “Hudson Commodore” visits this same old town and may be talking about his mother or grandmother who was happiest when cruising in the car, she “just wanted to ride in a Delahaye 135.” The way Isbell sings with a little more volume while saying “just wanted to ride” makes it clear that how strong this statement was true. “Palmetto Rose” brings back the honky-tonk sound from earlier in the album. The title of the track, from what I can gather, seems to be a love song for the state of South Carolina (the Palmetto state). Either how he felt about it or someone in his family did. It seems to be someone from his past (Isbell is from Alabama), who calls out for “Lord let me die in the Iodine State” (Iodine State also another name for South Carolina). Sometimes someone’s identity is so strongly bonded with who they are, you can never take it out of them, nor can you take them out from where they came. It’s an unbreakable bond.
“To a Band that I Loved” finishes off Something More Than Free. If there was an unexpected pregnancy at age 17 that abruptly changed a teenage love, then “22 backwoods years old” seems to be when the flame burnt out. But given all of the experience and wisdom of the years, there is gratefulness for the experience. He’ll only talk fondly about his past love at this time because he now truly feels this way. All genuine feeling.
And somehow I’m still out here burning my days
Your voice makes the miles melt away
I’ll be guarding your place
In the lights on the stage of my heart
I guess we’re all still finding our part
No malice, no resentment, just love.
I’ve always thought that a great country record makes you feel sorrow through equally through the instruments and the words. No instrument captures melancholy better than a country guitar. It helps to make the power of a great country record to be fully realized, when there is a voice like Isbell’s that can both make you feel comfy and get your emotions stirring.
Something More Than Free has all of those elements. Jason Isbell is truly a poet and masterful musician, capturing the past and looking towards the future, and making you feel at home while you listen to him recount those tales. Like a storyteller of old, brought into modern times to tell us the lessons he learned from growing up in that speed trap town of his. Lessons that we can all probably see pieces of ourselves in at some point in our lives.
Final recommendation
I know this album is rooted in trauma and sadness. But listening to a sad album doesn’t have to create sadness. In fact, when you immerse yourself in it, it doesn’t produce sadness - it produces redemption. Immerse yourself in this beautifully written record by a poet of the people. You’ll find it hard not to be grateful for your life experiences after listening to Something More Than Free a couple of times through.
Thank you for reading this edition of “When The Notes Mean More” as part of the Nerd-O-Divergent family of content.
I will be back soon with new posts!
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