Rating: NN
Until Patterson Hood loses the ability to come up with new rhymes for the word redneck, the main songwriter position with the Drive-By Truckers can be considered filled. Trucker guitarist Jason Isbell has consequently been left to record a solo album to express his innermost feelings.
Although there have been rumblings about Isbell’s departure not being as amicable as claimed, his DBT bandmates Brad Morgan, John Neff and his ex-wife bassist Shonna Tucker help out on the sessions that Hood co-produced at FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
But just because Sirens Of The Ditch was cut at the legendary Southern soul shrine and Hood’s father, celebrated session bassist David Hood, and keyboardist Spooner Oldham added their special touches, don’t think for a second that it’s some kind of classic soul album. It ain’t.
Instead, Isbell shows us his sensitive side in a collection of lightly strummed breakup ballads and weepy slow-dancers you’d expect to get from Ryan Adams. That’s not an endorsement.
Jason Isbell swings by the El Mocambo Tuesday (July 24).
