{"id":47099,"date":"2025-03-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/foxes-in-the-snow\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:20:07","slug":"foxes-in-the-snow","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/foxes-in-the-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Foxes In The Snow"},"content":{"rendered":"

The thing about legends is, they\u2019re often a kernel of truth packed inside a snowball of bullshit. <\/p>\n

Legends allow us, the audience, who are so far away from the truth of the artist\u2019s life that we can never hope to know it, the illusion of imagining that we do. Legends play a crucial role in the context around Jason Isbell\u2019s new album, Foxes In The Snow<\/i>, the first following his high-profile divorce from fellow singer-songwriter Amanda Shires. <\/p>\n

From the moment back in 2012 when Shires staged an intervention that led to notorious alcoholic Isbell finally getting sober, the legend surrounding their love story blossomed. Once Isbell sobered up, they got engaged, he wrote and recorded one of the great albums of this young century<\/a>, they got married, the album came out to ecstatic reviews, and they had a child together. The ballad Isbell wrote about falling in love with Shires (\u201cCover Me Up\u201d) became an iconic entry in his catalogue and frequent set-closer. Four years later he released an impassioned love song (\u201cIf We Were Vampires\u201d) about wishing he and Shires could be together forever. Soulmates, bandmates, and co-parents: to the audience looking in from the outside, Isbell and Shires were living a fairy tale.<\/p>\n

Until they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Tensions between the couple became apparent during the recording sessions for Isbell\u2019s 2023 album Weathervanes<\/i>, as revealed in the perhaps too-honest documentary film Running With Our Eyes Closed<\/i>. Their pending divorce went public in early 2024 and was finalized late in the year. That background makes it easier to understand why Isbell \u201cdidn\u2019t really want anyone else in the room<\/a>\u201d during the recording of Foxes In The Snow<\/i>; it was too fraught a moment to approach in any other way. <\/p>\n

The album is both stark\u2014just Isbell\u2019s voice and a single acoustic guitar, start to finish\u2014and full of life, thanks to his dexterous, inventive playing and keen ear for melody. This dichotomy feels right on an album that addresses what\u2019s been lost with often-bracing directness, while also celebrating love and possibility.<\/p>\n

If only that was the final word on this album\u2026 but let\u2019s take the journey before we arrive at the conclusion.<\/p>\n

First cut \u201cBury Me\u201d opens a capella, reminding you what a terrific singer and crafter of vocal melodies Isbell is as he moves through a song about transitions and transformation, not to mention seizing the moment: \u201cStill got so much to learn \/ Still feel alive.\u201d His prodigious picking skills take center stage at the top of \u201cRide To Robert\u2019s,\u201d an atmospheric slice of life that\u2019s full of great lines. \u201cWe all get lost out here \/ The deepest ditches line the righteous path \/ God said \u2018Hold my beer\u2019 and made a man so he could watch and laugh.\u201d Still, he ends on an optimistic note: \u201cGive your heart some time to heal \/ I don\u2019t say things that I don\u2019t mean \/ You\u2019re the best thing I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that warm-up, Isbell moves from circling around the subject at hand to facing it head on. \u201cEileen\u201d is an intense breakup song that reads like a message for Shires:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt ended like it always ends
Somebody crying on the phone
You tell each other you can still be friends
You both know you’re on your own
My own behavior was a shock to me
I never thought I\u2019d have the nerve
I hope you’re sleeping through the night, Eileen
I hope they’re grading on the curve\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

If that wasn\u2019t rough enough road to travel, later on Isbell\u2019s narrator comes across a note from his ex that reads simply \u201cForever is a dead man\u2019s joke.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up, \u201cGravelweed\u201d brings the album\u2019s context into the foreground as Isbell sifts through the wreckage, trying to figure out what lessons he can take moving forward:<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a gravelweed and I needed you to raise me
You couldn\u2019t reach me once I felt like I was raised
And now that I live to see my melodies betray me
I\u2019m sorry the love songs all mean different things today.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

This hits hard because it\u2019s true: first, that Shires rescued Isbell from himself, which seems to have contributed to a problematic dynamic between them, and second, that all the beautiful songs Isbell wrote about their relationship back in the day now land differently.<\/p>\n

And then he moves on, temporarily\u2026 \u201cDon\u2019t Be Tough\u201d offers a rhyming, witty, salty primer on maintaining good mental health that touches on the broader context of the album only in passing (\u201cDon\u2019t be tough until you have to \/ Take your heartbreak on the chin\u201d). \u201cOpen And Close\u201d find Isbell feeling vulnerable and wounded while trying to remain open to the possibility of new love\u2014a possibility that arrives with the title track. \u201cFoxes In The Snow\u201d feels like a love song for Isbell\u2019s new partner, artist Anna Weyant, whose painting graces the album cover. It\u2019s playful yet sharp in that distinctive Isbell way: \u201cFor all the boys I could have been \/ All the fights I didn\u2019t win \/ They put me here against her skin \/ She can see me. <\/p>\n

\u201cCrimson And Clay\u201d is another vivid song about Isbell\u2019s Alabama roots, bringing to life the good, the bad, and the ugly of growing up in the deep South. Just don\u2019t mistake it for a sign he\u2019s ready to move on. First comes \u201cGood While It Lasted,\u201d another scalding breakup song: \u201cAll that I wanted was all that I had \/ And it was good while it lasted.\u201d And then you get to his last word on the relationship, \u201cTrue Believer\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cAll your girlfriends say I broke your fucking heart, and I don\u2019t like it
There’s a letter on the nightstand I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever read
Well, I finally found a match, and you kept daring me to strike it
And now I have to let it burn to let it be\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

After that brutal climax, Foxes closes with a fervent love song, \u201cWind Behind The Rain.\u201d The beauty and ache of the song is that it isn\u2019t entirely clear whether he\u2019s writing about his new relationship or remembering his former one; there are lines that feel like oblique references to both \u201cCover Me Up\u201d and \u201cIf We Were Vampires.\u201d In the end, the message seems to be that he still believes in love, still believes that forever is possible.<\/p>\n

Foxes In The Snow<\/i> chronicles everything that Isbell lost in the last couple of years, including both his and Shires\u2019 marriage and the legend that grew up around it, while holding on to hope for better days ahead. And while I missed the dynamics and versatility of Isbell\u2019s superb backing band The 400 Unit, this is an album that Isbell probably did need to make alone in a room with just a microphone and a guitar. <\/p>\n

Having said all of the above, I noticed many of the same troubling undercurrents on this album that my colleague KayGee<\/a>. Consider these lines:<\/p>\n