Foxes in the Snow is the first time Jason Isbell has made an album alone. It’s a record with no backing band or instruments, just Isbell and an acoustic guitar. It’s also Isbell’s first record since his late 2023 divorce with his longtime partner, musician Amanda Shires. The couple had been public about their difficulties, in the press, online, and in the 2023 documentary about Isbell, Running With Our Eyes Closed. This, however, is the first chance Isbell has had to address the emotional fallout through song.
Given Isbell’s track record as a songwriter, it’s no surprise that a completely stripped-down record is one of his best. The end of his marriage hangs over these songs, but Isbell is too experienced as a songwriter to spend the entire record wallowing in sadness and anger. Despite the simple setup, he’s also not interested in making every track explicitly personal, evoking a wide array of moods and styles.
That isn’t to say there aren’t moments of sadness and anger. Some of Foxes in the Snow‘s best moments reflect those emotions. “Gravelweed” features a trademark soaring, aching Isbell chorus, where he belts, “I was a gravelweed and I needed you to raise me / I’m sorry the day came when I felt like I was raised / And now that I lived to see my melodies betray me / I’m sorry the love songs all mean different things today.” This chorus is a future audience singalong in the making.
It also seems like an explicit apology to Jasob Isbell’s audience that romantic tracks from the past, particularly “If We Were Vampires”, aren’t going to have quite the same feel anymore. The verses of “Gravelweed” also find Isbell in a revealing mood, as each one starts with, “I wish that I could be angry” and includes lines like, “That ain’t me anymore” and “All I know is I had to go / And you know why, why, why.”
“Good While It Lasted” really packs a lot of emotion into its four minutes, as Isbell tries to tell the listener and himself that he’s okay with remembering the good times and letting a relationship go as a thing of the past. He’s not very convincing, which gives the song its emotional tension. The song opens with, “You’re like sleep / Take what I can get / But I’ve gotta make some sense of this / So here the fuck I sit / At 3:00am / Trying way too hard / To find the words to slow my sweet, addicted heart.”
When Isbell gets to the chorus he declares, “And all that I wanted / Was all that I had / And it was good while it lasted”, and every iteration includes different examples of the good times. His vocal delivery is powerful and heartfelt, while the bright guitar is almost enough to make the listener believe that this is a happy, wistful song.
“True Believer” brings out the anger. It starts quietly, with a simple guitar arpeggio and low-key singing. The lyrics do the job for him. “All your girlfriends say I broke your fucking heart and I don’t like it / There’s a letter on the nightstand I don’t think I’ll ever read.” It’s maybe the only time on the album where Isbell lets out his ferocity, but even then, he ends the song quietly on the arpeggiated guitar and verse instead of the powerful chorus.
Those are just three of the 11 tracks on Foxes in the Snow, though. Isbell has much more to say and a few guitar tricks up his sleeve. “Bury Me” opens the LP with Isbell singing solo before his gently rolling guitar joins in. It’s an explicitly Western-styled cowboy song, ironically finding Isbell beginning his chorus with the declaration, “I ain’t no cowboy / But I can ride.” The refrain, “Well, there were bars of steel, boys / And there were bars of sand / And there were bars with swinging doors / For all the times between,” feels like a country music trope that’s been around since the 1960s. It appears to be a wholly original Isbell creation, though.
“Bury Me” also shows off Isbell’s acoustic guitar skills. He’s often playing a guitar melody while keeping the chords strumming along simultaneously. Elsewhere, he retains a simple bassline going on the low strings while strumming chords or playing a different guitar melody. It helps that his instrument, as the press information points out multiple times, is a mahogany Martin guitar from 1940. Credit where it’s due, though, this guitar sounds warm, clear, and lovely throughout the record.
“Ride to Robert’s” is genuinely pleasant, with an upbeat guitar line and lyrics appreciating life in Nashville. Isbell invites a person to join him in town, declaring, “I don’t say things that I don’t mean / You’re the best thing I’ve ever seen.” It also includes multiple references to the titular Robert’s, presumably Robert’s Western World in Nashville.
“Open and Close” is a more melancholy song set in New York City, where Isbell recorded Foxes in the Snow. Where “Ride to Robert’s” features Jason Isbell amused by people in cowboy hats and drunk bachelorettes, “Open and Close” finds him complaining that a cover band in the Village ruined Steely Dan‘s “Kid Charlemagne”, with “The solo fucked all to hell.” “Open and Close” features a quick, catchy guitar line, and ends on a note of hope, but the difference in tone between the two songs is striking.
The title track, “Foxes in the Snow” finds Isbell doing something different. Over a slinky, slightly off-kilter guitar line, Isbell declares “I love my love” and precedes to be a little sexy. There are a pair of standout lines here. The first, “I like her friends / The ones I know / And they leave drops of blood like foxes in the snow” is a bit inscrutable. In the other, Isbell says, “I love the carrot but I really like the stick.” The vocal melody is strong enough here that Isbell essentially plays an entire verse as a guitar solo, and it fits the song perfectly. This is a style Isbell hasn’t really done before, but it works very well.
On the other hand, “Don’t Be Tough” is something Isbell has tried before: an advice song. The first Isbell song to appear on a Drive-By Truckers record in 2003 was “Outfit”, a collection of advice Isbell’s father gave him immortalized in song form. “Outfit” has become one of Isbell’s most beloved songs, so intentionally duplicating that form is a bold move. It’s been 22 years, though, and Isbell has advice of his own to dole out now.
“Don’t be tough until you have to” and “Don’t be shitty to the waiter / He’s had a tougher day than you” is solid guidance, as are most of the other things Isbell has to say. Musically, the track is simple, just an easygoing guitar line that supports the vocals. As a track on this album, it works just fine. Once the listener connects to the stone cold classic “Outfit”, though, “Don’t Be Tough” comes up a little short.
The remaining three songs are all excellent. “Eileen” is another melancholy piece that sounds like a lightly fictionalized breakup tale. As with most of the songs on the album, the chorus and main guitar melody are absolute earworms. “Crimson and Clay” starts as a love letter to Alabama, as Isbell returns from out of state after setbacks. The second verse has him realizing that he has no use for a gun, and concedes that it was loneliness and alcohol, not the dangers of the big city, that nearly killed him. Verse three deals with racism, and concludes, “Guess a small town didn’t suit me after all / Still so many lonely kids surrounded by the rest of y’all.”
“Wind Behind the Rain” finishes the record on a positive note with an aspirational love song. Over a pleasant, folky guitar line, Isbell’s refrain, “If you leave me now, I’ll just come running after you / I’ll be the wind behind the rain”, works as a romantic inevitability thanks to his warm, yearning delivery.
For an album of 11 songs comprised of acoustic guitar and vocals, there’s a lot of variety on Foxes in the Snow. As good as Isbell’s earlier masterpiece, Southeastern, is, I’m not sure he could’ve pulled off a record this barebones earlier in his career. With Jason Isbell, though, it’s always been the songwriting, his rich Southern-accented singing voice, and his guitar skills, in that order, that set him apart. Those attributes are on full display here and while this record may not be a joy to listen to, it’s emotionally engaging and worthwhile.