Before Friday night's packed Turf Club gig, I talked to two different people who were relative late-comers to the Drive-by Truckers bandwagon. Both of them stated how disappointed they were to find out Jason Isbell had already left the group by the time they climbed aboard (one of these talkers, btw, was Hold Steady keyboardist Franz Nicolay, in town for his band's benefit gig Saturday at the Graves Hotel).
After the show, I'm quite confident to say nobody who saw Isbell tear through two truly glorious hours with his own group the 400 Unit could see his solo career as anything but a blessing. Hands down, one of the best rock sets I've seen all year.
The tight but jagged, Skynyrd-gone-Crazy-Horse band sounded even better than at their Turf gig this past spring with Justin Townes Earle. All the more impressive, Isbell's talent as a songwriter was driven home even more this time, as the tunes from his two recent albums have had time to sink in more, and now they stir the crowd as much as his Truckers tunes.
After opening with the dark rocker "Try," Isbell strung together his three deftly crafted songs about wars and veterans, "Soldiers Get Strange," "Decoration Day" and the jaw-dropping "Dress Blues" -- thus tearing through some of his most dramatic and moving tunes right off the bat. He then saved his next-best batch of songs for a encore: "Chicago Promenade," "Hurricanes and Hand Grenades" and an acoustic "The Day John Henry Died." Two other Truckers tracks wisely selected for the set were "Goddamn Lonely Love" and "Danko/Manuel."
As if those originals weren't enough to go on, Isbell showed off his band's mad skills all the more with a trio of covers, including a hard-boogying take on Big Star's "When My Baby's Beside Me" and a raucous version of the Talking Heads' "Psychokiller," the latter sung by guitarist and Kings of Leon lookalike member Browan Lollar (celebrating his birthday). The show ended with a riveting, soulful version of Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic" -- the kind of cover that can come off schmaltzy with a lesser band but was pure magic here.
