Jason Isbell returns with Something More Than Free (Southeastern Records), a subtler, more human-scaled record than his breakthrough Southeastern. Its pleasures might not be as aggressive or immediate as that of its predecessor, but it makes up for it with crystalline arrangements, evocative writing, and the best vocals Isbell’s ever recorded.

Memory hangs over this record like wisteria. “How to Forget” is about the beauty and pain of being confronted with who you used to be. You can hear the knife twisting in his heart when Isbell pleads, “Now that I’ve found someone that makes me want to live, does that make my leaving harder to forget?” He mirrors the back and forth of wanting and not wanting to forget with jangly sunshine pop juxtaposed with dark ink-washes of trebly electric guitar and a bassline telling the story under the story. “The Life You Chose” is the tale of someone who got out of their little town, calling out to a fellow dreamer who didn’t have that opportunity or the courage to grab it with, “Are you living the life you chose or are you living the life that chose you? Do you live with a man who knows you like I thought I did back then?” This song merges a train beat with the shadowy acoustic guitar of Athens college-rock and a soul-man ballad vocal (replete with strings and close harmonies), finding a blend that’s perfectly of the South and completely fresh. Isbell seems to know that nostalgia can be a cancer or a blessing, and where you’re from can crush you or give you the scars that make you interesting.

Belief is also a key component. On “24 Frames,” a soliloquy trying to make sense of life, Isbell opens with, “This is how you make yourself vanish into nothing,” accompanied only by his acoustic. Going on, as though into a mirror, the band slowly rises behind him as he half-angrily sing, “You thought God was an architect, now you know he’s something like a pipe-bomb ready to blow,” and the song blooms into a soaring, muscular anthem. The band—especially Chad Gamble’s drumming, Amanda Shires’ violin, and Sadler Vaden’s searing guitar—tracks the character’s transformation from learning to care about himself to learning to care about another to learning to let things go. “Flagship” is the most straightforward love song on the record. The vital power of empathy is displayed as someone watches an old couple and is gripped by the terror that he and his lover will end up that way, “sitting there a million miles apart.” The intimacy is reinforced by Isbell’s almost-whispered vocal slipping around the beat, accompanied almost exclusively by Shires’ voice and violin, with only wisps of Derry DeBorja’s organ for coloring. It also has the line closest to the record’s theme: “You’ve got to try and keep yourself naive. In spite of all the evidence, believe. Volunteer to lose touch with the world.”

Something More Than Free is a reminder to watch, listen, and try to connect with the moment. It achieves this with concrete detail and a love for the people being written about that comes through in every line, even as the writer holds them accountable. It also does it through Dave Cobb’s production, so close on Isbell—center frame at all times—that every breath and every movement of his hand across his guitar’s strings has the familiarity of a lover’s touch and the immediacy of an explosion. Isbell’s crack band, The 400 Unit, has a unique knack for following the thematic material lyrically and musically even when on diverging tracks. The band never overplays, but provides enough subtle pieces of the puzzle, as well as negative space, that it feels like the listener would never get the same meaning off a lyric sheet.