For the Drive-by Truckers’s three most recent albums Jason Isbell was the third partner in Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood’s long-standing southern rock preservation society. He wrote some great songs, a few of them the best the band ever recorded. Now he’s striking out solo (though not without a good deal of help from the Drive-by Truckers’ camp) and releasing his debut record, Sirens of the Ditch, via New West. “Dress Blues,” perhaps his best effort from the disc, is a mournful song written for the wife of a friend killed in Iraq; the song could easily turn to cloying sentimentality or American-style chest-beating. Isbell is, of course, a fair bit subtler than all that, reducing it to the personal story it deserves to be.  He’s not out to make broad statements, and though the song has some pretty clear anti-war elements, it’s more about observing the pain of the situation than the injustice his friend’s death. He lovingly captures the small elements, imbuing them with a gentle solemnity. In the final verse he sings, “high school gymnasium’s ready / for the flowers and old legionnaires / nobody showed up to protest / just sniffle and stare.” He doesn’t try to make sense of it or imbue it with any greater meaning; he just tells it like it went down.

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