Reunions is the seventh studio album by Jason Isbell, and the fourth credited to "Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit". In an attempt to help small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, the album was released by Southeastern Records in independent record stores on May 8, 2020, which was one week before its wide release on May 15.[1] The songs "Be Afraid", "What've I Done to Help", and "Only Children" were released as singles prior to the release of the full album.[1] In the United States, Reunions peaked at number 9 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Background
Isbell has noted that the common thread throughout the album is reunions with ghosts, both living and dead, from his past life. He told Vinyl Me, Please magazine that "there’s ghosts all over the record, and that’s why I called it Reunions, because that’s what a ghost is: reuniting with somebody long enough for them to tell you what you missed the first time around."[2]
In an interview with NPR Music, he elaborated, saying that "initially, I was just trying to write a bunch of good songs and I think that's always how it starts for me...What happened with this record: after I wrote a couple songs, I started noticing patterns. I started seeing the fact that I was going back in time and reconnecting, at least on a psychological level, with a lot of the people, a lot of the relationships that I had growing up and when I was younger and before I got sober. I got sober eight and a half years ago. For a long spell, between the time when I got sober and just the last couple years, it was really difficult for me to revisit those times in a way that was anything less than judgmental. Because I had to look back at myself with disdain and not risk turning back into the person I used to be."[3]
Songs like "Only Children" and "Dreamsicle" take a bittersweet look back at Isbell's childhood, while "Be Afraid" and "What've I Done To Help" address current events and political anxiety in the United States. "It Gets Easier" explicitly addresses the struggles of Isbell's newfound sobriety with the refrain: "it gets easier, but it never gets easy"; he told NPR that "The song is about looking at this from a perspective of time, and the fact that the song happens to a person who isn't recently sober, somebody who's been working on it for a while."[3]
The album received positive reviews from music critics. On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100 based on 16 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[4]
Mark Deming of AllMusic gave the album 4.5 out of 5 stars and commented on how it seemed to address the anxiety and unrest resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, despite being written before it began: "The fact these songs seem so telling in a strange and difficult time has a bit to do with coincidence, but more important is the excellence of Isbell's songwriting".[5] In his Substack-published "Consumer Guide" column, Robert Christgau highlighted the songs "It Gets Easier" and "What've I Done to Help?", and wrote of the album: "Lest anyone think he’s full of himself, this brave, soulful, articulate Nashville conscience singer turns the high beam on his own moral shortcomings".[7]
