Jason Isbell – Foxes In The Snow – For Folk’s Sake

Renowned songwriter Jason Isbell celebrated 13 years of sobriety in February of 2025. A well earned achievement that came after a difficult year in which Isbell filed for divorce from singer-songwriter Amanda Shires in December of 2023.

Isbell left the Drive-By Truckers in 2007 following a struggle with alcoholism, finding his way to sobriety in 2012. He has not turned back since, crafting some of the most powerful ballads of the last two decades, including ‘Cover Me Up’, ‘Live Oak’, ‘Elephant’ and ‘Children of Children’. 

He now returns with Foxes in the Snow, recorded over five days in New York’s Electric Lady Studios in October 2024. The artist’s first acoustic-only solo album is a towering work about loss, love, guilt, addiction, and the Green Hill, Alabama native’s path to finding himself again.

Song by song, layers of the artist are shed and laid bare. Tracks like ‘Eileen’ linger with the echoes of a relationship lost and the guilt of being the one who ended things. “My own behavior was a shock to me, I didn’t think I had the nerve, I hope you’re sleeping through the night Eileen, I hope they’re grading on a curve.” He goes on to sing, “Then I found the letter she wrote, against the wall behind the bed, it said ‘Forever Is a Dead Man’s Joke,’ and that’s the only thing it said.” Jason is lamenting the fact that either person thought the relationship would last forever, and it is not hard to see reflections on how he handled his own divorce.

‘True Believer’ is a deep dive into the belief of having “loved and lost and still stuck around’.  Isbell sings “Well I finally found a match and you kept daring me to strike it. Now I have to let it burn to let it be.” Throughout the entire song, Jason is battling his own heart when it comes to being a true believer in love, having gone through such heartache over the years. Ultimately, he sides in believing in love. “So when we pass on the highway, I’ll smile and I’ll wave, I’ll always be a true believer babe.”

The highlight of the record is ‘Good While It Lasted’, arguably one of Isbell’s most profoundly captivating ballads. “Last night I couldn’t sleep at all, I found another empty wall and I couldn’t get past it/And for a minute in the afternoon, I almost didn’t think of you, and it was good while it lasted.” 

The darker, faster-paced title track ‘Foxes in the Snow’ is an exploration of a new, mysterious love and the struggles to trust anyone again in new relationships. Lines like “I like her friends, the ones I know, and the way they leave drops of blood like foxes in the snow,” evoke feelings of mistrust, suggesting that while he loves his love, he thinks her friends are talking behind his back, drawing drops of blood in the snow like foxes. The rest of the song seems to be a subtle exploration of addiction, “I love her well, and I love her sick, I love the carrot but I really like the stick.” The artist is prone to the punishment of the stick and to the pains of addiction, and at times it feels like the love he professes could also be a larger analogy for his addictive heart. 

Isbell has a knack for writing songs that capture heartache and pain in a way that is at once simple and profound. Foxes in the Snow is his masterpiece in that world, and he adds to and expands his songwriting prowess in a way that feels both natural and earned. Through many hard lessons, Isbell drifts back to his pen, pad, and a 1940 Martin 0-17 acoustic guitar to teach us how to heal, how to navigate life’s valleys, and how to move on after the end of a long and beautiful love.