Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Reunions (May 15, 2020) Album • Page 5

Welp, you didn’t put “Vampires,” so I guess we’re even in the fuckup category.

 

Fair enough haha

 

I just wanna see some more love for TVA if I'm being real

 

Fuck if Elephant isn’t one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard

 

These lists made me think about the fact that Isbell is the only artist where some of his best songs are the ones I listen to the least....like Vampires and Elephant are probably the best songs on their respective albums and I almost never listen to them lol. They’re so powerful that they feel dangerous.

 

Children of Children is basically a Neil Young song and that’s a big part of why I love it so much

 

lmao

 

Solid opportunity to post one of my favorite videos:

 

Immediately what I thought of as well

 

So pumped for this to come out! Went through my local record store (even though I don't have a cd or record player anymore).

I still remember finding Southeastern in my sophomore year of college. I didn't listen to americana/country/folk AT ALL at thatpoint, and nothing could pull me away from the 1975's s/t. Craig had just published that beautifully well written reviewthat single handedly forced me to buy the thing on iTunes sight unseen. It was this dark stormy early morning and I had gotten up way too early to do laundry before the machines all got full. I'll never forget sprawling on that small flight of concrete stairs behind the loading dock, watching the sky lighten up as my music tastes changed forever. I had been in a really dark place and so much of that record really spoke to me. I felt seen and reassured.

I listened about four times in a row and then grabbed Craig's end of year list (which also had Gundersen, Daws, Will Hoge, Donovan Woods, Josh Ritterand a few other artists on it that have now become my favorites).

More I think of it, I might be conflating the 2013 and 2014 lists, and I can't go back and find them now.

Always going to be thankful for Isbell (and Craig, I guess, but nobody tell him).

 

Thank you so much for the kind words, old friend. It's easy for me to look back at all that writing I did and wonder if any of it mattered. It's always gratifying to hear I played a role in introducing people to artists they love, or in your case, whole genres! On the subject of Jason Isbell specifically, I have to give credit where credit is do and shout out @DaydreamNation, who sent me a link to the "Alabama Pines" video sometime in early 2013 when we were working on one of our My Back Pages features. That seems like a literal lifetime ago.

I dug up all my old lists for you. I salvaged all the AbsolutePunk ones on my blog, for posterity's sake. I've been meaning to pull them all together in one place, since I now have a decade's worth of full EOTY lists under my belt. Some of these have aged better than others. Some weird calls, on the 2013 one especially (Reflektor at 6?! Christ! And Southeastern is ranked lower there than it is on my decade list.) but it's still fun to look back at these.

2010: Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: A Look Back: The Best Music of 2010
2011: Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: A Year in Review: The Best Music of 2011
2012: Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: A Year in Review: The Best Music of 2012
2013: Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: My Top 30 Albums of 2013
2014: Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: My Top 30 Albums of 2014
2015: Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: My Top 30 Albums of 2015
2016: Craig Manning's Top Albums of 2016 • chorus.fm
2017: Craig Manning’s Top Albums of 2017 • chorus.fm
2018: Craig Manning's Top Albums of 2018 • chorus.fm
2019: Craig Manning's Top Albums of 2019 • chorus.fm

2000s: Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: My Top 100 Favorite Albums of the 2000s
2010s: Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: My Top 200 Favorite Albums of the 2010s

 

Wow what an awesome resource. I will definitely be going through these!

 

That really does feel like so much longer ago than seven years, but at the same time it's wild to think it's been seven years. I think I was pushing Isbell on fucking anyone who would listen from like 2011-13 so it was super gratifying to see him rocket to fame with Southeastern even though that album took me awhile to fully process.

My life was pretty upside-down in a not-good way when we were doing those features, but I think we still put out some content nonetheless with those features haha. Ah, the AP.net twilight years...

 

Awesome! Hope you find some cool stuff. A ton of albums represented across those lists, for sure.

I was finishing up college around that time, and would concur that it simultaneously feels like forever ago and not all that long ago.

I'm pretty proud of some of those features still. I revisited our Bruce ones a year or two ago and had a blast reading them. It was just fun to dig in to older records, some of which I'd never spent much time with. I remember being blown away and being a bit confounded by both Rain Dogs and Marquee Moon when you picked those.

 

Yea I won't apologize for making you listen to either of those haha. Those pieces were fun to do though--really miss writing about music/for pleasure and not school or work

 

“Only Children” is just a different level, man. That guitar solo just hits perfectly every time.

 

I know what you mean. I write so much for work that sometimes writing an album review or something after work just doesn't sound all that appealing. I'm trying to get back into it after having done very little music writing this year.

 

Are any of those old album recco threads that we did saved? Or were they lost to the AP shutdown?

 

People and Things above Elsie??

 

In 2011, yes. Narrowly. Now, no. Elise beat P&T by 40 slots on my decade list.

 

Yeah for sure. However I'm going to have about two months of COVID-prompted unexpected total free time this summer so maybe I'll start a blog or something who knows haha. Maybe I'll become a famous youtuber (nope)

 

Also back to on topic: one week until this comes out for indie stores and I'm very hype. I don't have a good record-playing setup right now so I just ordered a CD copy to support Jason, from some indie store in Kansas that does online sales.

 

Same thing I did, but the indie place I found was in Rhode Island I believe, so it was local-ish for me.

 

Yep exact same haha. I just kept looking until I found the closest indie place to me that had the CD in stock. I think the place I ended up getting in from is just west of Kansas City, which is only 3.5 hrs from here, so "localish" for the spread-out midwest

 

Oh shit! What were your initial summer plans?