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Tyler: Peter, the second half of Weathervanes kicks off with “When We Were Close,” a rock-song lament about a lost musical compatriot.

Peter: Yeah, it’s about Justin Townes Earle, a once-hot alt-country star, and son of Steve Earle, who died of an overdose in 2020. He and Jason were friends but they had a falling out somewhere along the line and they hadn’t reconciled before Justin’s death.

Tyler: What a damn shame.

Peter: You can hear him wrestling with it along with some pretty serious survivor’s guilt.

On a different note, I love the guitar sound on this one. I don’t really play electric guitar, but if I did, I’d be looking for that tone.

Tyler: The whole thing sounds great.

Yet another masterful lyric that strikes me is “I can hear your voice ring/As you snap another G string/And you finish off the set with only five.”  What a deftly drawn picture.

Peter: Yeah, it’s great. It’s funny, the only string I’ve ever broken is the high E. I would like to ask him about this.

I feel like he should have said E string is what I’m arguing. It’s a more common string to break. I believe.

Tyler: To Twitter!  Or, forgive me, “X.”

Peter: Yes! He answers sometimes.

Tyler: What a champion.

Following up “When We Were Close” is “Volunteer.”  I love this one.

Peter: The keyboards on this are very interesting. It sounds like “Space Oddity” or Pink Floyd or something.

Tyler: It’s another heartbreaker.  About an orphan struggling to become an adult.

Peter: Yeah, another short story. Another good one.

“At the Shell by the Gunbarrel Mall.” Another great location. The internet told me that Gunbarrel Pointe is a shopping mall in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Tyler: And the KOA campground.  What a detail.

Peter: Yes! She sleeps good in the Scout!

I had to look up what that is.

Tyler: A car?

Peter: The internet told me, “The International Harvester Scout is an off-road vehicle produced by International Harvester from 1961 to 1980.”

Tyler: I’ll be damned.

Peter: Does not sound comfortable!

Tyler: “Some nights I dream that the ghost of my momma is holding me tight in her arms.”  Just, so gutwrenching.

Peter: He’s operating at a really high level.

This is much better than Ringo the 4th.

Tyler: You sure?  Maybe you should go back and listen to that one again, just to be certain.

Peter: Next up is “Vestavia Hills!”

Tyler: This is almost like a sister song to “When We Were Close.”

Peter: I didn’t make that connection, but you’re right!

“The boy genius is grown now and you’re an angry young man/Well, I won’t be around when you die in the van.”

Tyler: Pretty devastating.

I wouldn’t want to be the object of that scorn.

Peter: It feels like he’s singing about his younger self, as well.

Tyler: That absolutely makes sense.

Peter: Another geographic aside, Vestavia Hills is a city in Alabama. It’s a suburb of Birmingham known for its excellent school system.

Tyler: Interesting.  That lends our characters here another shade.

Continuing in the vein, then, of singing about one’s younger self, is the next song.  “White Beretta.”

This one is brave.

Peter: Great song. Seems pretty obviously autobiographical.

Tyler: Yeah, the age matches up. ”19 years old in 1998.”

Peter: “I could have been somebody’s father/Couldn’t boil a pot of water.”

Tyler: So effective.  He’s walking a paper-thin line here, and he manages not to tumble.

For the sake of our readers, let’s outright state it: “White Beretta” is a grown man’s reflection upon a time in his youth when a teenage partner decided to terminate a pregnancy.

Peter: Right. It’s a big swing. It could have been…lots of kinds of bad. But it is not.

Tyler: I can’t help but think of Ben Folds Five’s “Brick,” a similar narrative with a much harsher portrayal of the woman who chooses the abortion.  I mean, Folds’s “She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly” is just a touch more negative than Isbell’s “Thank you for your grace/And the dreams we got to chase/For what you chose to do.”

Peter: Oh, yeah. I haven’t heard that song in a long time. It’s a good one.

Tyler: It’s certainly very effective, “Brick.”  I don’t think it’s Folds’s most empathetic moment, though.  Not by half.

Anyway.  It’s a delicate dance.  Isbell nails it.

Peter: It’s funny doing an album like this after Hackney Diamonds. Those songs didn’t mean anything!

Tyler: Oh, Lord, Hackney Diamonds.

Glossy nonsense by comparison.  Or, just glossy nonsense.

Peter: Fun fact: Derry Deborja, the keyboard player in the 400 Unit, used to play with Sun Volt.

Tyler: Oh yeah?  It all comes full circle!

Peter: “I was sitting at a red light, listеning to Son Volt.”

Next up is “This Ain’t It.”

Tyler: This one’s fun.

Peter: It’s so much fun.

Tyler: A real rave-up about telling your misguided friend to get out of the wrong relationship and situation.

Peter: Love hearing Amanda on the chorus.

Tyler: It’s gotta just kill live.

Peter: Absolutely.

Jason and Sadler get to play those guitars!

My wife would get tired of the soloing.

Tyler: But it sounds so good!   Come on, Mrs. Peter!

I bet she’d just love that moniker.

Peter: She’d like the outro.

Okay, “Miles.” The big closer.

Tyler: Epic.  A phenomenal finale.

Peter: This sounds like Neil Young fronting Wings circa 1973. I swear I came to that conclusion on my own, but I later found this quote from an interview Jason did with Apple Music. “The approach was kind of like if Neil Young was fronting Wings. It was like a McCartney song where it’s got all these different segments and then it comes back around on itself at the end, but also sort of with Neil’s guitar and backbeat.”

Tyler: Well son of a bitch.  I’ll be damned.

Peter: Anyway, I really love it.

Tyler: A friend of mine thought Isbell and Shires had split due to some of the lyrics on Weathervanes.  “Miles,” I imagine, played a big part in that presumption.

Peter: Interesting.

Tyler: It’s a fantastic song.  He knits together those segments and it works seamlessly.

Peter: It’s thrilling.

Tyler: And it ends on an unresolved note.

Brilliantly effective way to end an album riddled with conflict, memory, and uncertainty.

Peter: Perfect.

I was thinking about the universe he creates on this record, the “Isbellverse,” if you will.

Tyler: Oh yeah?

Peter: It’s rife with mental illness and substance abuse, unemployment, unwanted pregnancies, survivor’s guilt, estranged families, etc. It sounds like a pretty miserable listen.

Tyler: And yet, as Allmusic accurately declared, it’s a triumph.

Peter: It really is.