Jason Isbell’s ‘Foxes in the Snow’ Treads Dual Paths — Half Harrowing Divorce Record, Half Exultant Chronicle of Fresh Affections: Album Review (2025)

Jason Isbell hasn’t “gone solo” in just one way, he’s gone solo in every way. Or at least he has for a New York minute. After eight previous records under his name that featured full electric ensembles, “Foxes in the Snow” is the first album this poet laureate of American rock has made sans any accompaniment at all other than his own picking, recorded in five days last fall at NYC’s Electric Lady studio with nothing but an engineer and a trusted 1940 Martin O-17 acoustic guitar for company. Now, on previous records where he was joined by his usual live backup group, the 400 Unit, the ensemble more than sufficiently complemented and even bolstered his songwriting; he didn’t earn his rep as one of our greatest living writers by somehow being held back by having a first-class band. But there were occasional moments during those albums where you might have wished that they would either rock a little harder or just move out of the way. Here, on “Foxes,” we find out what it’s like when that second experimental wish is granted, and it sounds as glorious as it is spare. Folk music: it’s effing back, folks.

But let’s face it: If you’re a fan, you’re probably less curious about the sonic switchup of Isbell trying his hand at being a solo artist than you are about how Isbell will come off as a single man… as in, possibly writing about, or around, his split from ex-wife (and ex-400 Unit bandmate) Amanda Shires. There was no more beloved First Couple in any genre of music than these two, as commemorated in a revealing HBO special (“Running WIth Our Eyes Closed”) that aired not so long before they split in 2023. So the intrigue factor could hardly be higher as devotees await both their subsequent releases to see whether either or both of these master songwriters will fully Go There. Shires’ isn’t out yet, but as for Isbell’s first time out of the gate since the split: He is a brilliant fiction writer as well as memoirist, gifted at writing completely imagined short stories in song as well as more clearly autobiographical fare. So knowing that, and knowing that he seemed a little bashful about the HBO doc, and knowing that at least initially he publicly shunned discussing the divorce, I had a hunch about which way he would go with this album — a hunch that he might retreat further into fiction for now, to keep his heart off his sleeve and the public out of his business.

Well, sometimes, when you’re wrong, you’re really wrong. And I couldn’t have been more off-base in predicting that Isbell wouldn’t go ahead and bare all. Or bare enough that you at least feel like you’re getting illuminating flickers of the all of his personal circumstances. The writer of “Cover Me Up” has moved on, but isn’t taking pains at all to keep his feelings undercover. He’s never had a record that felt more diaristic, or had less to do with exploring the lives of drug-addicted copper thieves or other made-up-from-scratch misfits. And he’s unafraid to sing outrightly smitten songs that we can reasonably assume are directed to the new love in his life, as well as sharing laments about what went wrong with the last. It’s fascinating and startling and often brilliant, and/or heartening, and… and… If you’ve felt equally devoted to Isbell and his ex as people or just as artists, it maybe goes without saying that you should brace yourself for some complicated feelings. Because most of their shared audience probably still isn’t sure how this joint-custody-of-our-affections arrangement will work out.

There are a handful of songs here are not strictly about love, or the loss of it. The opening “Bury Me,” which came out as the first single, feels like a bit of a misdirect about where the album is going. It’s a fine cowboy song in a long, storied, existential tradition, but ultimately probably the least compelling tune on an album that gets a whole lot more riveting from there. On the other hand, one of the record’s best tracks is one of those that veers from the strictly personal path. In the lineage of Isbell songs that deal with the state of the world and how to live conscientiously within it, “Crimson and Clay” is trenchant and timely number. It’s about what it’s like to be from a deeply red state (in his case, of course, Alabama) while having turned into a deeply blue guy. He sings of casual racism that mixed right in with seemingly innocuous signs of local pride that he experienced in his upbringing: “We prayed to Martha White / Little noose in a locker/ Brown eyes crying in the hall/ Rebel flags on the highway/ Wooden crosses on the wall.” There’s a half-reconciliatory climax to the song that declares he just can’t, or won’t, walk away entirely from where he was raised: “Guess the small town didn’t suit me after all / There’s still so many lonely kids, surrounded by the rest of y’all / I can’t seem to keep myself away/ So I head back to the crimson and the clay.” The right-wingers who troll Isbell on social media may respond that it’s fine if he wants to stay away, but anyone who shares a similar predicament with the singer (which is to say, tens and tens of millions of people) might take some comfort in adopting “Crimson and Clay” as an anthem, to help get through these politically and geographically polarized times.

Keeping things general, Isbell also indulges a dip into the classic “advice song” genre with “Don’t Be Tough,” a song that could be offering its laundry list of life hacks to his daughter or to a buddy or to a younger self. It feels like something Tom T. Hall might have jotted down on a particularly wise day, with some sprightly finger-picking supporting lines like: “Don’t be shitty to the waiter / He’s had a harder day than you/ Don’t make babies stay up later/ Just because they’re so damn cute / Don’t say love unless you mean it/ Don’t say sorry less you’re wrong/ Tell a story like you seen it/ Tell yourself that you belong.” There are about a dozen or more terrific mantras embedded in this number, though it suffers from the sameiness of virtually identical verses and choruses, and needless repetition of the chorus lyrics — a rare misstep from one of our great writers, albeit one that isn’t completely fatal to the tune.

Aside from this aforementioned trio of outliers, though, the bulk of “Foxes in the Snow” gets down to the nitty-gritty and carves two distinct paths through the whiteout. There are the songs that go deep into a split, like the one we know Isbell experienced, and the numbers that describe falling hard for a new gal, something that anyone who reads the papers, as it were, also knows to be true. There is not much in the way of direction as to who the happier songs here refer to, from a reference to blonde hair to multiple references to a love affair commencing and continuing in New York City, and even an aside thrown in about his new love having been brought up in Calgary. That’s the hometown of Anna Weyant, the NYC art-world star who painted the new album cover, and who has been photographed on Isbell’s arm. Isbell has certainly written his share of personal love songs before, but probably never so many mash notes all at once. And he sounds committed, as well as much giddier than anyone who was ever a member of Drive-by Truckers could ever have been predicted to become. He is still possibly watching the clock on mortality, but the guy who wrote the heart-melting “If We Were Vampires,” about the desire for (but impossibility of) eternal mortal love, is now writing the newly blissful “Wind Behind the Rain,” in which he mentions old age as he coos: “I want to see you smiling when you’re 90 / I’ll always see you like you are right now / All my wild beginnings are behind me/ And I know that we can stick it out somehow.”

Meet the new Jason — at least as much of a romantic as the old Jason allowed himself to be, and suddenly in more concentrated doses. There are even songs here that fans assumed from their titles or cursory hearings in concert performances would be downbeat, but that turn out to be love letters, too. Take the title song, which some followers thought had brooding undertones because of the lines “I like her friends — the ones I know/ They leave drops of bloodlike foxes in the snow,” which possibly allude to some of the figures a new love might associate with in the New York scene. But ultimately, there’s not really a drop of irony in this profession of adoration. “I like the way she disassembles me at night / I love her well and I love her sick/ I love the carrot but I really like the stick,” he sings — which seems less like a confession of a kink (although you’ll find plenty of comments online that take it that way) than a sweet assertion that it’s the real woman behind the alluring veneer that he’s ultimately fallen for.

And “Good While It Lasted” sounds like it’s going to be part of the divorce half of the album, but it’s anything but. It’s full of the lovestruck musings of a suitor who is temporarily parted from his new anamorata, thinking back on their too-fleeting moments together: “You let me kiss you on Broadway in a black Cadillac/ And it was good while it lasted…/ For a minute in the afternoon I almost didn’t think of you / And it was good while it lasted.” This is schoolboy-crush-level infatuation, and if you are not firmly in the “too soon” camp about what he’s sharing here (as some online definitely are), it’s infectious stuff.

In that same song, he references his famous sobriety when, speaking of falling in love, he affirms: “Last time I tried this sober, I was 17.” Those familiar with his redemption story will know the tale of how Isbell entered into his long-standing relationship with Shires when he was out of control and well short of being on any wagon, so the detail rings true. Which brings us to the album’s less enamored songs, the ones that go into what went wrong in a relationship that was so celebrated in the public eye, not least of all for how his spouse put up an ultimatum to sober up.

Isbell does address that in “Gravelweed,” singing one of the most bracing choruses he’s ever sung: “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 live to see my melodies betray me / I’m sorry the love songs all mean different things today.” He seems to be singing that a relationship based in one partner being effectively a sobriety coach might be destined never to equal itself out. And it’s easy to imagine the tune sparking a thousand conversations in recovery groups, some supportive of its point of view, and some thinking it’s just damned chilly. Some good writin’, either way, whether you think Isbell is right on or copping out in alluding to codependency vs. love; it won’t be the first time this debate has taken place, but it may be the first time a song sparks so many back-and-forth discussions about it.

You might be thinking “Gravelweed” must be the hairiest song on the album, and that’s because you haven’t yet gotten to the soon-to-be-wildly dissected “True Believer.” There, Isbell opens each refrain with “All your girlfriends say I broke your fucking heart, and I don’t like it,” which, whether you love it or not, is a hell of a bold chorus hook. There are references to domestic arguments turning to literal screams, even as the singer insists, “I started out a true believer, babe.” And then, at the end, he moves that statement to the present tense, allowing about as much conciliation as he’s inclined to what appears to be a still-tense present moment: “Like the stain on your teeth / I’m as stubborn as wine / Just when you think that I’m beaten I get up every time/ When we pass on the highway I’ll smile and wave / I’ll always be a true believer babe.”

Will that wave be reciprocated? If ever in music-aficionado history there was anticipation for an “answer record,” it might be at a peak now, with Isbell having delivered such a candid and absorbing side of an intriguing story that awaits a possible emotional rebuttal. Even with some natural limits on how much Isbell is ever going to put into a song, his transparency is nearly shocking, although probably not even as shocking as the third-to-half of the album that is about being lost in love. What is clear here is that “Foxes in the Snow” is a great example of form meeting function, as far as the singer-songwriter doing something so personal that he has said he just didn’t want anybody else in the studio adding judgments or filters… and a long-overdue acoustic album being the practical result. In answer to the musical question “How do I get you alone?,” in Isbell’s case, we now know the answer.