Two Acclaimed Albums—Heard in a New Light
These Alabama artists' masterpieces dive deep into sobriety the deeper you listen
Jason Isbell’s Southeastern and Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud don’t need any more praise years later, or really, to be reviewed again. It would be as threadbare as blogging the brilliance of London Calling or Pet Sounds today. What’s left to say?
At the time, these records canonized the careers of Isbell and Waxahatchee and had critics scrambling for new qualifiers to celebrate them. Southeastern was dubbed a Dylan Blood on the Tracks comeback and Isbell’s own Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love. Waxahatchee’s recording was lauded as a Lucinda Williams-like knockout without a single weak track.
So there’s not much acclaim I can add to these albums, both of which the artists have since moved on from. In Jordan Calhoun’s recent column for The Atlantic he describes the concept of “reviews” as making his “teeth itch.” Instead, he argues for examining an artist’s work with a personal resonation, a theme, or a universal story to share.
And after 30 years since writing cheeky and arrogant record reviews for campus music rags as a tenderfoot “critic”, I agree with Calhoun. So I’m revisiting these two albums not just for their timeless songwriting. Instead, I share them because for me, they are intimate, enlightening, relatable, and constantly playing in my headphones in a pendulum between hope and hurt.
It’s also accidental (and a little freaky) that the two records that inspire my recovery are both from Alabama artists, with (alt)country auras and twangy vibes. Not my first go-to usually. But that just makes it all the more exceptional and cosmic for me.
A few weeks ago I published a confessional piece about my relationship with alcohol that overwhelmed me with support, whoops, and an outpouring of private messages from people who told me I summed up their own experiences in an affecting way. Now it’s my turn to share some words from others who move me in the same way.
Both Isbell and Katie Crutchfield (who goes under the moniker Waxahatchee) have made no secret that their seminal albums stem from their recent sobriety. Each artist is an open book about the vast topic, so I’m not discovering new doorways into cryptic lyrics here. What’s significant for me is that the deeper I immerse myself in their words and music, the more strength and inspiration I soak up.
An essential factor for this musical connectivity is that both Southeastern and Saint Cloud don’t wallow in tales of boozy victimhood and dirty rock bottoms. Both deal with transformation, moving forward as new humans that walk like newborn deers, and all the confounding work it takes to become your true self, one of gratitude and creativity.
Isbell’s Awakening
Jason Isbell, after years of habitually performing wasted with the Drive-By Truckers (he admits to barely remembering his time with the band), he was let go. He continued to record solo projects with Jack Daniels as his co-producer, until his wife (and current collaborator/fiddler) Amanda Shires and other friends forced him into rehab. He slowly emerged with his classic album, and is over a decade sober now.
He’s also a rockstar on Twitter, alienating his Southern good ol’ boy fans with his liberal, no-shit (and very funny) opinions. His legendary concerts are full of devout fans of his large catalogue, but also have an underlying fellowship of recovering alcoholics euphorically cheering on the lyrics of Cover Me Up, a song about love and drying out: “I sobered up / I swore off the stuff / Forever this time.” The place goes bananas every time he sings that.
(Bittersweet note here: Isbell recently made his Victoria BC debut, an hour from my home. I’ve never seen him live, but couldn’t attend because I was in detox getting better myself—both apt and kind of heartbreaking).
Isbell is poetic as hell for a supposed country rock artist, and uses characters like prisoners and civil war survivors to tell universal stories of recovery. But one of his oft quoted lyrics from “Live Oak” hits a pretty personal chord:
“There’s a man who walks beside me / He is who I used to be / I wonder if she still sees him and confuses him with me.”
In 2013, right after sobering up and writing that line, Isbell told NPR’s Melissa Block “I worried what parts of me would go along with the bad parts, because it’s not cut and dried. It’s not like you make the right decision and everything’s great and you’re a better person for it. You are, you know, at least 51 percent better.”
Jason Isbell has also written, for me, what are the most authentic lyrics depicting the dreadful feeling of going into treatment, something I’ve been asked to do more times than I will admit here:
“And in the car, headed home / She asked if I had considered the prospect of living alone”
“In the room / By myself / Looks like I’m here with a guy that I judged worse than anyone else”
“So I pace / And I pray / And I repeat the mantras that might keep me clean for the day”
Waxahatchee’s Turnaround
Katie Crutchfield, while touring her fourth album as Waxahatchee, decided her life was becoming unmanageable, and one night got her own hotel room in Barcelona, sobered up, and resurfaced with a country-pop record that seemed perfect after so many lo-fi indie-punky releases.
Saint Cloud is criminally contagious with melodic hit after hit, where she finally embraces her Southern roots and the guiding lights of heroes like Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Lucinda Williams.
Her so-called sobriety album is perhaps more ambiguous in its recovery messages, but Saint Cloud is definitely a document of coming out the other end. Her single “Fire” poetically dances around moments of reckoning and self-acceptance, coming back to the unavoidable sentiment that “It ain’t enough.”
“And I take off driving / Past places been tainted / I put on a good show for you/ And when I turn back around / Will you drain me back out /
Will you let me believe that I broke through?”
Crutchfield also takes responsibility for the toll her alcoholism has taken on others in songs like “Hell” and “War”:
“I run my soul and body down / If I kept a parasite around
I'll keep lying to myself / I'm not that untrue
I'm in a war with myself / It's got nothing to do with you.”
And in the sparse and delicate Arkadelphia, she nails the imperfection of sobriety:
“If we make pleasant conversation / I hope you can’t see what’s burning in me
To see a slip as a failure / A balance I couldn't keep
You count the rings for truth you'll never cheat”
Saint Cloud and Southeastern are certainly not the only alcohol recovery albums out there—that topic in pop music is almost as pervasive as love, heartache, and living large. There have been some winners (U2’s “Bad”, and “Running To Stand Still”, Steve Earle’s output, Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up”) and some incredibly unsubtle recovery pap as well (see Linkin Park, Metallica, Aerosmith, Macklemore, and more).
But for now, Southeastern and Saint Cloud are my sobriety soundtracks I add to the stacks of books, tools, and people I use on my own journey of recovery.
And even if wading into these artists’ stories of fighting the disease of alcoholism isn’t your thing…please dig into these magnificent recordings if you haven’t yet. They’re just so damn good.
Please feel free in the comments or chat section to recommend any inspirational albums that fuel you, recovery-based or not. I would love to hear from you.
Thanks for this! I’ve been aware of Mister Isbell for sometime and actually had tickets for his recent Vancouver show but bailed in the end as I had just been over there for The Flaming Lips (very disappointing) the week before and was getting tired of single-handedly supporting BC Ferries. I’m always looking to discover new music and will definitely check these out. Thanks for your beautiful writing about them 🙏