There’s less of Jason Isbell than there was when he was a Drive-By Trucker and drinking to excess. These days, the sober 36-year-old Alabama native is as lean as his songs. Isbell’s music has been praised by Bruce Springsteen and John Prine, kindred spirits who know that songwriters bank their best material early on and spend the rest of their career making withdrawals.
The touts in London’s Kentish Town also sensed Isbell’s hot streak. Those in the heaving throng at the Forum knew he’s been writing songs that seem to have occurred to him as naturally as they have wormed their way into their memories. In a two-hour show, largely drawn from his recent albums Something More Than Free and Southeastern, Isbell played 19 of his own. Although the big choruses of 24 Frames, Relatively Easy and Palmetto Rose stood out, there was nothing you could call a dud.
Isbell and his four-piece band conducted themselves like an act getting ready for the big leagues. A song such as Cover Me Up may have been developed in small clubs, but its big thumping ending is arena ready.Their leader, meanwhile, resisted the temptation to be a guitar hero, sticking to coruscating chords and making sure we never forgot what the song’s about. Isbell’s chosen subject is time and the wasting thereof. In even his catchiest tunes you’ll find find a shudder of mortality: when he came back to play Elephant, a song about a close encounter with cancer. The Forum went pin-drop quiet as 2,300 people leaned in to hear what happened.
