Maybe I just really like Jason Isbell nowadays. Or maybe he's really that good. Either way, Weathervanes is a solid hour of high quality songs that are just as strongly in his voice as all his other ones, while feeling like a natural evolution at the same time - airier and more textured, a breath more rambling, maybe overall a bit mellower, than what's come before. I feel it in my chest.
The front end, from "Death Wish" and "King of Oklahoma" through to "If You Insist", is particularly strong but it sustains the whole way through to epic closer "Miles".
So good - each new album lands in its own right, and the back catalogue doesn't diminish over time (in fact the opposite - reading back over what I wrote about each of his albums at first encounter, all except the most recent in Georgia Blue have grown further on me since then).
Southeastern (2013 / 2014 for me)
Something More Than Free (2015)
The Nashville Sound (2017)
Reunions (2020)
Georgia Blue (2021)
