This second of his solo efforts since his days in Drive-by Truckers really hits it square on. An amazing set of finely crafted but rough hewn songs ranging from heartfelt late night laments to full on-guitar slab laden bar room rockers. Honesty, passion, an unerring eye for the gritty been-there-done-that detail are in evidence throughout this fiery Americana masterpiece. Isbell’s heart rending opus lies somewhere in that open territory between Wilco’s more experimental sonic stuff and the over the top bombast of Bruce Springsteen. For me that’s a really great spot, and yesterday it was just as amazing in live acoustic duo.

For a comparatively brief moment in the mid-1960s, Muscle Shoals, Alabama was the unlikely epicenter of a major American songwriting renaissance. Here are some of the names: Arthur Alexander, Donnie Fritts, Eddie Hinton, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, O.C. Smith, Joe South, Tony Joe White. Toss Bobbie Gentry into that mix, on style if not geography, and the list is not complete, regardless.

Style matters, for in those turbulent times these writers and their collaborators fused the vocal passion of African-American soul and gospel to an Anglo-Saxon storytelling tradition which goes back at least to Beowulf: Tough, hard, passionate, unflinching songs, unrepentant in their sense of place and direct in their stubborn Southernness.

That is a powerful pile of names to spade across the work of Jason Isbell, as his second solo album, named for his band, is, well, only his second solo album. And he’s almost 30. It’s not simply that he lives in Florence, Alabama, just outside Muscle Shoals, nor that he recorded Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit at the famed FAME studio there. That guarantees nothing.

The songs will stand on their own.

Isbell is a former member of the Drive-By Truckers and this is his second solo release (his first release with his band The 400 Unit). The 400 Unit is Derry deBorja (keyboards), Jimbo Hart (bass) and Browan Lollar (guitar). Matt Pence (Centro-matic/South San Gabriel) lends his talents as co-producer, drummer and engineer. The album was co-produced by Isbell and The 400 Unit with Matt Pence. “I want it to be known that it’s a band record,” says Isbell. “I want it to be known that it’s something we all did together. Even though I wrote the songs, it was a very inclusive project.” Isbell has posted the new track, “Seven-Mile Island,” on the band’s MySpace site. The album was recorded at the renowned FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL. Isbell, who Details Magazine calls “one of America’s best young songwriters,” is following in the tradition of American songwriters who have recorded in North Alabama.

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit on CD