Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit w /S.G. Goodman

A Jason Isbell record always lands like a decoder ring in the ears and hearts of his audience: a soundtrack to his world and magically theirs, too. Weathervanes carries the same revelatory power. This is a storyteller at the peak of his craft, observing his fellow wanderers, looking inside and trying to understand, reducing a universe to four minutes. He shrinks life small enough to name the fear and then strip it away, helping his listeners make sense of how two plus two stops equaling four once you reach a certain age—and carry a certain amount of scars. The roots of this record go back into the isolation of the pandemic and to Isbell’s recent time on the set as an actor on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. There were guitars in his trailer and in his rented house and a lot of time to sit and think. The melancholy yet soaring track “King of Oklahoma” was written there. Isbell also watched the great director work, saw the relationship between a clear vision and its execution, and—perhaps most important—saw how even someone as decorated as Scorsese sought out and used his co-workers’ opinions.