Jason Isbell Something More Than Free (180 Gram Vinyl, Deluxe Edition, Digital Download Card) (2 Lp's)

Jason Isbell's 2013 breakthrough album Southeastern was written and recorded in the wake of Isbell's newfound sobriety, and it often sounded and felt like a musical version of the Fourth Step, in which Isbell took a long, hard look in the mirror as he came to terms with the emotional wreckage he left in his wake during his years as a drunk. By comparison, Something More Than Free, Isbell's 2015 follow-up, plays out as the work of a man a year or so into his recovery, grateful but still working with the nuts and bolts of living as a better and more mature man while the shadows of the past remain faintly but clearly visible. The opening tune, "If It Takes a Lifetime," is sung in the voice of a man adjusting to a quiet existence, not in love with every aspect of life as a working stiff but happy to be in a better place, and it sets the stage for a set of songs that move back and forth between past and present as Isbell's characters deal with lovers they wronged ("How to Forget"), the burd