Album Of The Week: Jason Isbell Something More Than Free

Before we get into this week's album, some housekeeping is in order. As Michael explored in last week's column, Global Release Day is firmly in effect. Albums come out on Friday now, and we're all just going to have to adjust. It's the new reality. But as it turned out, many of our readers didn't like the idea of the Album Of The Week column coming on Friday, when everyone is rushing to finish the work week and anyway we have a couple of other "best of the week" columns that always run. Well, we agree. Album Of The Week is coming back home to Tuesday, where it'll stay. That makes things a bit messy, since the album you're reading about won't be out yet. Sometimes, it means we can't give a full accounting of everything that'll be out. This Friday, for example, Future's DS2 album is coming out, and I am fully amped for that thing, but I haven't heard it yet. Maybe if Epic's press team was sending out promos, or if a stream was floating around out there, DS2 would be this week's Album Of The Week. But I can't write about an album I haven't heard yet. Maybe I'll write about DS2 in next week's Status Ain't Hood column, or maybe it'll be a Premature Evaluation. And speaking of Premature Evaluations: This week sees the release of Tame Impala's Currents. It's a stunner of an album and one of the year's best, but we're not talking about it in this space because young classic rocker Ryan Leas already wrote about it beautifully in his Premature Evaluation. So: the AOTW distinction doesn't go to Tame Impala or to Future this week, and now that you've read this paragraph, maybe you'll think the album that does occupy this space is some distant runner-up. Not so. Jason Isbell's Something More Than Free is an absolutely lovely record, one that absolutely demands your attention.