First Listen: Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, 'The Nashville Sound'
With eyes clear and nerves jangled, Isbell wrestles with unpleasant social and political realities on his sixth studio album.
Lust and love will always inspire songwriters, but some of popular music's most compelling dramas stem from people's relationships to their backgrounds. The impulse to put distance between yourself and the environment you came from, or at least plot an escape and , can be every bit as strong as the impulse to , live out or idealize a . There's a comforting clarity to the emotions that such songs conjure; they can envelope listeners in the warmth of nostalgia, or awaken fantasies of rebelling against social restrictions.
