There’s a double shift for Will Johnson tonight. He is, after all, one fifth of The 400 Unit these days, but before that he sits alone on his chair and seems to pour his heart out through these songs.
Whether they are his own, like “El Capitan”, or from his former band Centro-matic, like “Atlanta”, there is something stripped bare about this. It is all a far cry from the Glee Club, the last time he played Birmingham getting on for 20 years ago, but even in the cavernous surrounds here, “Scorpion” sounds ominous.
The whole thing sounds cracked and broken, really. On “Flashes And Cables” it is as if he is pulling it from somewhere deep within, and even the harmonies have a funeral air. By the time “Of Passengers And Plight” reckons he “felt like Freddie Mercury at Wembley that day”, you smile, because a chilly summer night in Birmingham is a long way from Live Aid, but there is something incredibly beguiling about these songs all the same.
Now, if you’ll permit me to start with something personal, “When We Were Close” is one of your humble scribe’s favourite songs of the last few years. I was gutted when it wasn’t played 18 months ago in Wolverhampton, so there was much excitement in my little corner of the Symphony Hall when it started the set tonight.
The way it is played, though, speaks volumes about this band.
Some bands come on with bombast and fanfare. Not here. They walk out. No real image. No fuss. Just the music, because the music is all that matters.
There are few better than Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit and, over the course of his almost two-decade solo career, Isbell has proved that again and again. Whether it is the likes of “Flying Over Water” or the quite magical “Tupelo”, this is, as he points out more than once, “a rock’n’roll band.”
The contrasts in the material are never better shown than on “Speed Trap Town”, with its small-town boredom and that wonderful line: “Well, it’s a Thursday night but there’s a high school game / Sneak a bottle up the bleachers and forget my name,” before the electrifying boogie of “Super 8” kicks things somewhere else entirely.
“Vestavia Hills” is another from 2023’s album of the year, “Weathervanes”, and there’s a nod to Isbell’s former life with Drive-By Truckers on “Decoration Day”, which remains magnificent.
This is a long and involved set, but it ends up being in two halves too. “I definitely don’t have to pee real bad,” he jokes. “We’ll be back in five minutes.”
When they return, it is with the magnificent pair of “Volunteer” and “Bury Me”, before another Drive-By Truckers cover in “Outfit”.
Isbell snuck out a solo album last year with “Foxes In The Snow”, and he and guitarist Sadler Vaden play a couple from it here. The way their acoustics meld on “Ride To Robert’s” and “Crimson And Clay” is a joy.
But it almost doesn’t matter what they play, because “If We Were Vampires” sounds mighty too, as does another Truckers tune, “Goddamn Lonely Love”.
One thing we haven’t mentioned yet is Isbell’s guitar playing. Maybe that can get lost a little, simply because the songwriting is so good, but my word, the solo on “King Of Oklahoma” is right from the top drawer.
And if we don’t always mention his playing, it is only because the songs themselves demand so much attention. “Cover Me Up”, arguably his most personal track, addresses alcoholism head on and takes us to the encore with the sort of hush that only truly great songs can create.
The encore itself features another Drive-By Truckers cover in “Danko/Manuel” and another from “Foxes In The Snow”, “True Believer”, before “This Ain’t It” ends things with what amounts to a jam, the band really seeming to let their hair down.
That underlines the night perfectly, because Isbell isn’t especially chatty here. He doesn’t need to be. His music speaks so eloquently.
He is already, perhaps, the best at this. Here’s the scary part, though: he is almost 30 years younger than Springsteen.
He has already lived a life and distilled it into some incredible songs, but even after a performance this incendiary, the feeling remains that Jason Isbell might not have peaked yet.
Isbell pic courtesy Rich Ward.
