What Means the World to You: 2015 in Musical Memories
July: Jason Isbell — “24 Frames”
Jason Isbell is an American hero. If you were raised in a conservative small town like I was, you’re taught to respect the hell out of firefighters, policemen, and soldiers, the men who put themselves in the way of physical harm to protect the greater community. Well, maybe Isbell doesn’t put himself between us and bullets, but he’s doing the kind of emotional shepherding that a generation strung out on divorce and depression desperately needs. Southeastern was proof that an addict could come back from the edge, and it helped more than one person I know back down from their own black nothing. But Something More Than Free was different. This was an album that proved surviving your own darkest moment doesn’t have to be the defining feature of the rest of your life. “24 Frames” busts right past self-pity and apathy, demanding that we value each segment of the life we’ve been given, no matter how arbitrary and careless the universe is with our still-breaking hearts. It demands that you give your all to each moment, that you smile for the picture even if you already know the film goes up in smoke. The backend of 2014 saw everything I thought was certain do just that, and surviving the blaze was something I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do. Even if I did survive it, I wasn’t sure how to keep going, how to keep on living when everything felt like a blackened, burned out shell of its former self. A few months into 2015, I still kind of felt like I was going through the motions, a zombie unsure how to care about anything around me. This Isbell song stepped into all that decay, picked me up, and carried me back out into sunlight. This is how you talk to her when no one else is listening. Even if God’s a bomb waiting to go off, we’re not. So smile for the camera. You’re here now. —Caitlin White