The Nashville Sound (Gatefold LP)

"Isbell named the album for a lush, sweetened approach to record-making that was meant to help country music compete in the popular landscape of the early rock 'n' roll era, a production style famously associated with RCA Studio A. His take on the Nashville Sound proceeds from more or less the opposite philosophy; he couldn't be less concerned with making his music go down easy.

With eyes clear and nerves jangled, he's wrestling with unpleasant social and political realities. He's hardly the first singer-songwriter to take up these concerns, but coming from him, with his gift for representing people who exist worlds away from elite, abstracted discourse, it's a vantage with visceral impact." - NPR

"Isbell does seem like he's struggling to enjoy his newfound success, fretting about Trump on White Man's World and reliving a painful split on Chaos And Clothes, but his strength is in his honesty. He couches his anxieties in simple but poetic language as his band find the sweet spot between country and rock."
4 / 5 Mojo

Gatefold LP, 180g vinyl.