BONUS TRACKS: Jimbo Hart Parts Ways With Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

After taking a leave of absence from playing bass with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit last summer, Jimbo Hart announced this week that he’s making that step away permanent. “I’m no longer a member of the 400 Unit,” Hart posted on X. “I’m grateful for all the years, all the faces I’ve played for in the course of the band’s history and proud of all we accomplished. I’m happy to be moving forward into a new chapter of life and open to all possibilities, as they may arise.” Isbell was among the many fans publicly wishing Hart well, posting “I love Jimbo and I’ll miss touring and playing with him. Very glad he’s taking care of himself.” When he took a break in June, Hart said he was taking time to tend to his mental health, later posting updates from his progress in rehab. A replacement for him in the 400 Unit has not been announced, though Rolling Stone reports that a new press photo for the band includes bassist Anna Butterss and multi-instrumentalist Will Johnson, who both appeared in Isbell’s latest Austin City Limits episode. Read more about Hart’s departure and history with Isbell in this coverage from Rolling Stone.

Sabine and her Spotify Wrapped top artists, thanks to the Calming Classical playlist

Like everyone else this week, I checked out my Spotify Wrapped, and, well, it sure surprised me. Instead of Nickel Creek or Colter Wall or Jobi Riccio or Allison Russell or other artists I know I’ve listened to a lot populating my top artists of 2023, like I expected, I found … Claude Debussy and Johann Sebastian Bach. And that, like so many of my problems, can be blamed on the adorable dog who lives with me. She’s the anxious type, so I play her a “Calming Classical” playlist every time I have to leave her home alone, which adds up to a lot of plays, as it turns out. While Spotify was crunching my data, it also said my “sound town,” based on all that calming classical music, was Cambridge, Massachusetts. That town, plus Burlington, Vermont, and Berkeley, California, came up for a lot of folks, apparently, and The Washington Post got to the bottom of why that is and how Spotify calculates someone’s “sound town” anyway. Read that piece here, and if you have any fresh suggestions for playlists to calm a lonely pup, please let me know.

Spotify has its usefulness, of course, but buying music is the best way to support the artists we love. If you’re looking to knock out your gift shopping list, you might consider heading to Bandcamp today for Bandcamp Friday — the monthly day when the platform waives its cut of music and merch sales and passes along all proceeds to artists. It’s unknown at this point whether Bandcamp Friday will continue into 2024, given its sale to Songtradr (which coincided with a layoff of around half of Bandcamp’s staff). So for presents for yourself and the music lovers in your life, there’s no time like, well, the present.

As world leaders convened this week in Dubai for the COP28 climate change conference, the Big Three global music labels announced their own climate effort, the Music Industry Climate Collective. The aim is to both promote and offer practical strategies for music companies of all sizes to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint. The first step, according to a press release from Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, and Warner Music Group, will be to measure greenhouse gas emissions from product manufacturing, distribution, and licensing in the music industry. The MICC will partner with the American Association of Independent Music, which represents more than 600 independent US record labels, to ensure smaller businesses have a voice in discussions. Read more in this story from Billboard.

WHAT WE’RE LISTENING TO

Here’s a sampling of the songs, albums, bands, and sounds No Depression staffers have been into this week:

The Pogues – “Fairytale of New York” (RIP Shane MacGowan)
André 3000 – New Blue Sun
Alexa Wildish – “Weightless”
William Prince – “I Want It That Way” (Backstreet Boys cover for Spotify Singles)
El Búho – Strata
Stuart Bogie feat. James Murphy – Morningside
Mary Chapin Carpenter – “The Hard Way”
The Moss – “The Place That Makes Me Happy”
boygenius and Ye Vagabonds – “The Parting Glass”
Low – Christmas
The Barefoot Movement – “Get Behind Me”