Live Review: Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, Tift Merrit

16 April 2014 | 1:47 pm | Ross Clelland

Moments like that, Songs That She Sang In The Shower’s wry memories, and the raucous morning-after Southern rock of Super 8 somehow just all fit together to show an artist at the top of his game – whatever category you try and peg him. Phenomenal.

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Alt-country. Hideous, perhaps meaningless, pigeonhole. The only consistent point being most put under the banner likely object to it. Tift Merritt probably owes more to a 'traditional' country style – the pure-voiced girl healing her broken heart via a battered acoustic guitar – in the manner that's worked for Emmylou and Ronstadt among many others before, and likely will ever so. Merritt's North Carolina birthplace has given way to living in New York, so maybe there are some more street smarts now, but there's still down-home charm, her voice ringing out over Eric Heywood's pedal steel as she charmingly puzzles which oceans she actually crossed to get here.

Tift has a song called Travelling Alone. So does Jason Isbell. As he later pointed out, hers is about being happy to do so, his the exact opposite. His music is a broader church as well. The 400 Unit can deal with the waltzing reflections of Different Days, before Chad Gamble's alternately swinging or pounding drums then crank them through Drive By Truckers' Never Gonna Change.

While Isbell's set is centred on the sometimes stark confessions of his towering Southeastern album, various of his pasts are also noted. Highlights of his Truckers tenure such as Decoration Day – “Half my family were happy I wrote songs about family secrets, then there's the other half …” – sit alongside little 400 Unit gems like Alabama Pines' homecoming hymn.

But the Southeastern songs remain special. The sheer sober (in a couple of senses of the word) honesty of them looks you in the eye, or in the case of the tender Cover Me Up into the eyes of his wife, band violinist Amanda Shires. For that blink, they're the only two people in the room, and you're almost intruding. Aww. Moments like that, Songs That She Sang In The Shower's wry memories, and the raucous morning-after Southern rock of Super 8 somehow just all fit together to show an artist at the top of his game – whatever category you try and peg him. Phenomenal.

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