Jason Isbell
Something More than Free/Thirty Tigers
“Are you living the life you chose? / Or are you living the life that chose you?” These two lines aptly sum up the tone of Jason Isbell’s latest release. This electrifying collection of 11 songs is loaded with palpable tension between being held captive by something (or someone) and being free, and realizing that freedom isn’t always enough if you don’t know how to handle it. “Speed Trap Town” plays like a lament after realizing you’ve broken free from a small town only to become trapped in a larger one, and while “To a Band That I Loved” starts with all the promise and excitement that initial attraction brings, heartbreak sometimes still awaits in the long run. “Children of Children” furthers the notion that life can live you, recognizing that the effect of your existence on someone else’s life can be shackling. Isbell’s scratchy, slightly twangy drawl is engaging, and the raw combination of Americana, folk, country, blues and rock is an undeniable feast for the ears, mind and heart.
Sharon Van Etten
I Don’t Want to Let You Down EP/Jagjaguwar
Over the course of four new tracks and a live version of the rarity “Tell Me,” Sharon Van Etten ambles through a series of stark emotional landscapes and paints exquisite portraits of relationships in states of bliss and disarray on her new EP. The title track is poignant with its universal refrain, and she bares her soul on “I Always Fall Apart,” admitting how she responds to crises. “Just Like Blood” is filled with telling lines like, “Shot me up like a gun/Then you run like blood,” matched with a lazy rock beat that’s slowly dying out, and when she opens “Pay My Debts” with the line, “It took me years to find true peace,” it’s hard not to pay rapt attention to the rest of the story. Van Etten is often subtle in her delivery, but whether crooning to an ambient folk melody or letting an Americana rock groove take over, she certainly doesn’t let the listener down.
Our Friend and the Spiders
It Will End Quietly/self-released
Between the heavy doses of rock which populate this album, the insanely catchy—if at times slightly off-kilter—melodies, and singer-guitarist Mathieu Morin’s soaring vocals (mash Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds together with Muse’s Matthew Bellamy and you’re not far off), make this pure fun. “Keeping on Marching” has the sort of anthemic, fist-pumping, arena rock bombast that fans of Muse can appreciate, while “The 55” is a slow boiler which explodes towards the end. “The Sight of Sin” and “Deranged” play like kissing cousins with cascading guitars and psychedelic rock perfectly mirroring the unsettling content within each track and “Bleeding the Sky” is filled with so many ominous chords you’ll think the Apocalypse has arrived. Rock music, at its core, is supposed to be a damn good time, and this is indeed that.