Jason Isbell's 'Southeastern' - Track-by-Track (10th Anniversary)

Photo: Southeastern Records

by Julian Spivey
Today is the 10th anniversary of the release of Jason Isbell’s seminal album Southeastern, a modern classic and Americana all-timer that sent Isbell’s career skyrocketing in popularity. It’s also one of my all-time favorite albums, which is why I wanted to celebrate its “tin” anniversary by breaking it down track by track. 

Cover Me Up
“Cover Me Up,” the opening track on Jason Isbell’s Southeastern, has probably become the most beloved song of his discography (though it could easily be any of a dozen songs depending on which Isbell fan you ask). Seeing the song performed in person it definitely gets the biggest reaction from the crowd when Isbell sings the line: “I sobered up and I swore off that stuff forever this time.” “Cover Me Up” is potentially the most personal song on a obviously personal album for Isbell as you can tell it’s about his, at the time burgeoning, relationship with his future wife Amanda Shires and the need to conquer his demons to adequately pursue that love. I hate that one mainstream country asshole covered this song and that some people associate it with him instead of this all-time beauty of a track. You have my permission to punch anyone in the face who claims that cover is a better version.

Stockholm
“Stockholm” has always been one of my favorite tracks on Southeastern. It’s likely because it’s one of the easier songs to sing along with on the album and is quite catchy and fun – something that you’re not really going to get much from the album. It’s about relationships perhaps wanting to be with his new love, perhaps dealing with his addiction or both. It is perhaps one of the more cryptic songs on the album and parts of it – even perhaps my favorite parts – I’m not sure I fully understand, but as Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes puts it brilliantly at the end of his masterpiece “A Little Bit of Everything”: “it’s like trying to make out every word/when they should simply hum along.”

Traveling Alone
“Traveling Alone” was the first song I ever heard off Southeastern – I think it may have been released as a single before the album came out – and I loved it from the beginning. Interestingly, it probably wound up being one of my least listened-to tracks on the album over the last decade. The song perfectly encapsulates a traveling musician going from town to town to play shows and the loneliness they can experience living such a life. There’s some hopefulness to it as he finds himself asking someone to tag along with him on the ride – most likely Amanda Shires, who at the time was his girlfriend, not yet his wife, who joins him in harmony on the chorus.

Elephant
If you’ve ever Googled “Saddest Songs of All-Time,” it’s likely “Elephant” is on that list and if it isn’t it damn well should be. The song details the devastating tale of a young woman dying of cancer from the perspective of a male friend who loves her. It’s touching because it’s an experience nearly everyone has gone through either personally or has seen a loved one go through and is such a helpless feeling and situation to be in. There are some strikingly gut-wrenching lyrics in the song, but the one that always hits me the hardest is: “There’s one thing that’s real clear to me/No one dies with dignity.” It’s not a track you’ll want to shout along to and it may make you cry every single time you hear it, but it’s undoubtedly one of the most impressive songs on a modern classic of an album.

Flying Over Water
“Flying Over Water” stands out on Southeastern because it’s only one of two rockers on the album and it comes up first. It makes for a nice respite from the naked, stripped-downness of the album. In the song, the narrator and his partner (possibly Isbell and Shires, but maybe even Isbell’s first wife Shonna Tucker or both), take off on a flight – possibly their first major trip from home – and the anxiousness such a thing can lead to. Critic Steven Hyden brilliantly compared the imagery of the song to the final scene of the classic 1967 Mike Nichols film “The Graduate,” saying: “A thread that connects Isbell’s relationship songs concerns lovers who might be too broken to actually be together.”  

Different Days
“Different Days” is a nice, acoustic folk song about trying to escape an old life and find something new while maturing with age. It’s filled with terrific lyrics like the entire penultimate verse: “And the story’s only mine to live and die with/And the answers only mine to come across/But the ghosts that I got scared and I got high with/Look a little lost.” I believe it’s Isbell coming to grips with the man he is now and the man he used to be.

Live Oak
“Live Oak” isn’t the only song on Southeastern that’s more of a story song than personal, though there are obvious personal moments in its lyrics – especially the opening and closing: “There’s a man who walks beside me/her it is who I used to be and I wonder if she sees him and confuses him with me,” but it’s the only one that takes us back in time. The time period is never expressly stated, but I’ve always felt it was set sometime in the late 1800s. It’s the story of a killer and robber who flees to another part of the country to begin life anew and falls in love, but when the rumors of his past life catch up to him he’s forced to kill and run again. Sometimes horror can be devastatingly beautiful.

Songs That She Sang in the Shower
I’ve always loved the lyrics to “Songs That She Sang in the Shower,” from the wittiness of the first verse where the narrator mouths off to someone he views as beneath him intellectually to the specificity of the heartbreak of a failed relationship and the pain of never hearing certain songs the same way again. I can’t help but wonder if the song is about Isbell’s first failed marriage and if songs like Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” Willie Nelson’s “Yesterday’s Wine,” Dusty Springfield’s “Breakfast in Bed” and Anti-Flag’s “Bring Out Your Dead” had important meaning to that relationship or if they just rhymed easily with the rest of the lyrics.

New South Wales
“New South Wales” has always been my least listened-to track from Southeastern and I don’t really know why – it’s certainly not lacking in comparison to the rest of the album. I’ve never really understood why the title shares its name with a state on the east coast of Australia, but commenters on songmeanings.com seemingly in the know say it’s about the time Isbell toured Australia with fellow singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle and bad experiences on that tour with substances was one of the catalysts to him seeking sobriety. I wish the supremely talented Earle, who died in 2020 from an overdose of fentanyl-laced cocaine, had done the same.

Super 8
I don’t know how much truth there is to “Super 8,” the hardest rocking track off Southeastern, but it certainly seems and feels completely real, especially knowing Isbell’s bout with alcoholism early in his career. It’s complete rock & roll debauchery with drinking, drugs, women, fights, wrecking motel rooms, puking in sinks, almost dying and being resuscitated. It sounds like a nightmare that comes off as humorous for having survived it all.

Yvette
When Southeastern first came out I had “Yvette” as the highest-ranked track from the album in this website’s end-of-year best songs of Country and Americana Music list. The album has some dark songs and themes, but I’m not sure any are darker than this song about childhood sexual abuse from one’s father and the teenage neighbor witnessing the vile act and deciding to assassinate the father from his bedroom window. It’s one of the few, if only, song(s) on the album that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Isbell’s life at the time, purely a fictional story song complete with terrific slide guitar from Isbell. It (along with potentially “New South Wales” – I can’t remember) is the only song from Southeastern I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing Isbell perform live in concert.

Relatively Easy
“Relatively Easy,” as the final track on Southeastern, must be some sort of summary for the piece as a whole – potentially that the songwriter has been through the hell of alcoholism and the struggle to get sober and has come out the other side of it with a bit of wisdom in that even though life is hard there’s always someone else out there struggling even more. 

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