Jason Isbell's songs are filled with ghosts. They're haunted by spirits both welcome and unwelcome, by the personal and historical legacies that make us who we are. Nowhere Is this more evident than on his 2013 breakthrough album Southeastern. Isbell offers confessions. reflections. and promises that contront and make communion with those who have come before and remain wIth us still. Its twelve tracks represent an extended meditation on the concept articulated by another celebrated southern storyteller, author William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It isn't even past."