It's the Vinyl Countdown: #5 "Foxes in the Snow" by Jason Isbell
Put your hand upon the shifter of your year and with expert execution, engage the clutch of depression and shift back a gear. Back we go. Back to those first few months of 2025, back to make non-threatening eyes at the completely whack-a-doodle world around us.
Let’s take its temperature, shall we? Let’s acknowledge our surround sounds. Let’s try not to lose our minds as we observe the folly of man.
[Sound of gears grinding. I would like it noted in the record the I’ve done that SFX for dramatic effect. I can drive a manual, flawlessly, thank you very much.]
We shift back to a time of confusion and surprise and shock and disappointment and maybe anger or fear and, I dunno? I’m talking about what I was feeling. If you found joy back then, I’d need to know why before I could congratulate you.
But I digress.
When I look back to that time, I have an allergic reaction to the overwhelming nuttiness, and I can feel my transmission as it gear-hunts to find something workable. My body is bloated with the internalization of SO MANY FEELINGS, coming all at once.
The vibe is ANXIOUS. Big traffic. A lot of speeding idiots. I can’t change lanes and everyone’s smashing each other and raging and destroying some very nice vehicles in the process.
Stone Age, Ice Age, Gilded Age. One day Heather Cox Richardson is going to teach a class on The Vibe Shift Age. This is it. We’re living it. An age where the vibes are constantly off and life is in perpetual spin out because of it.
I guess this is just my way of saying that I kicked off this year feeling like I’d been through a breakup. Like the year had decided to kick itself off by kicking me. In the head. In the heart. In the metaphorical lady balls. It was a rough breakup, too. Like I’d been dumped by email. No worse. By text emoji. [Broken heart] [Person Walking] [Peace sign] 💔🚶✌️
So, that’s the gear we’re in at the start of the year. My trust and confidence in the outside world—and the people in it—was in tatters. Even the air felt threatening. Was anybody telling the truth anymore? Did trust even matter? So, wait—you can just lie now? I’m too old for this shit.
How to shift my vibe? How to keep going when all I wanted to do was turn everything off and check out of society?
Hmmmm... What do you need to do after you break up with someone?
You need to dissect the hell out of yourself, that's what. You need to go inside (of yourself) to avoid the outside (of reality). You need to process it or at least attempt to. You need to force yourself to sit in the wreckage of your own naivete and gullibility and figure out your role in it. You need to flip over the stones and broken plates and shattered glass and pick out the glinting shards of hope so you can begin to, hopefully, start again.
You need to wallow in it.
Vibe shift eureka! I knew I wanted a good wallow in it. But in someone else’s wallow. I wanted to wallow in the carnage of someone’s else’s mess and broken heart and find the light through that and go ‘yes! I know what you mean, I’ve felt that too’ and in some messed up way, through processing all these internal failings and realizations, find a way to change to better gear after that.
Musically, it’s obvious that to achieve such deep self-reflection and wallow blissery you just need to find a good old-fashioned breakup record to match your breakup mood. Not a dis track record. A full on lay it all out, from the heart while you break my heart record. A record rich with naked simplicity and singular focus. Words and melody. Reflection and rawness. Something basic, both in focus and style.
"Foxes in the Snow" by Jason Isbell is such a record. It's a man and his guitar. Singing about love, lost and found.
But I’m jumping ahead. Because here’s the thing: when I ordered this record, I didn’t know it was a breakup record. That was just a lucky accident. You could say this record called out to me. The vibes were vibing their vibe thing through the universe and who am I to deny a vibe?
Another thing. Until this record, I will confess that I could name only one Jason Isbell song. The one about magnolias blooming. “Cover me up.” It is a love song. There might be a not-so-subtle call back to that as we go through the track list, but again, we’ll get to that.
Jason Isbell the artist. I didn’t know a single thing about him, either. I didn’t know he used to be in Drive by Truckers because I have no idea what that is (a band, but I’m not going to look them up). I didn’t know he’d had problems with alcohol. I couldn’t have pointed him out in a lineup. All I had to go on was that I loved that song with the magnolias blooming, and that on one day, early in 2025, the name was on a list of records coming out in March, so I ordered it based entirely on that.
Life is about taking chances on records. Sometimes they end up making your end of year top 5.
While I was waiting for “Foxes in the Snow” to arrive, fresh from launch day, flashes of discussion about the record would blink before my eyes on the social medias. While I did my best not to read anything about it, I was able to glean from all the chatter that the album I was soon to receive was a divorce album.
The best divorce album of all time is of course, Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" (fight me!) but the difference here is that I knew about Bob and Sara and the story behind that record. Too much. I knew NOTHING about Jason Isbell’s life, let alone who he was divorcing. Nothing of their lore.
This was a glorious stroke of luck, for while I usually advocate for the importance of context, no context meant I could approach each song with no pre-conceived notions. No gossip to ink my perceptual waters. No background information to lay judgement upon the defendants. I could listen to the whole thing as a story not about people I know parasocially, but just about circumstance and themes.
This lack of background gave me enough distance from the people in the story to be able to listen and reflect and experience some breakup grief without all the baggage of a raisin heart or heavy soul. This was good.
Because I wanted find joy in a painful memory and hope in heartache. I wanted to process my own shit through hearing about someone else’s. I wanted to listen without context.
If the starting vibe of 2025 is ANXIETY, what sort of vibe cocktail does “Foxes in the Snow” provide to help level a gal out?
This record is about hurt. And a bit about blame. And acceptance. Apology. Forgiveness. Rebirth. All that juice. All is love. And I’d say that’s the vibe: LOVE. But a very specific application of the power of it to hurt and heal. The coming back from the loss of it. The examining of the growth and change that occurs over time through our connection to each other. The shimmer of it and how it changes color from dark to light. From fear to regret and back to hope again
It’s a reckoning of sorts; with the idea of self and the role we play in each other’s lives. A visualization of how our actions affect others. The flow of juice through our lives. From where I sit, it doesn’t matter if you know the backstory. This is context not needed. It’s a story and experience as old as time. The ending of one relationship, the beginning of another—it’s all fodder for a spicy or self-reflective lyric.
Sharp knives and spiky hearts with gooey centers. Poets with guitars. The internals. Stick yer finger in the soot of this fire and wiggle it about to find the jewels of understanding. Booze themes and growing themes and blame themes. I’m not going to deep dive all the songs, but fair warning: I am putting on two oxygen tanks and a weight belt.
This is the music. This is my response to it.
Time to talk track-list turkey.
We start our journey into the depths of this self-reflection and analysis sea with Side A, Track 1: “Bury Me”. Is it about the death of a relationship? Is it about the death of a life you’re moving on from? Or is it about… both?
Whatever the death is, know this: it leaves a corpse. At the end of whatever you’re at the end of—your love, your career, your mistakes, your wits end—what will you do with the body? How will you deal with the grief or anger or shame of it as it rots away in the corner?
Way to dive in!
Oh, and while we’re at it, what should be buried deep down or in back yards, and what should be buried loosely or far away. And how do we stop our past from being dug up and picked over again, and again, and again? How do we move on?
So many questions.
At first blush, I took it at face value. The man with his guitar doesn’t care much about where he’s buried, because he’s had a good life. He’s done a lot of shit. He can die on the road for all he cares. Such a free spirit. He’s lived and loved and dug it all, so dig that hole.
Like I said—first blush.
After a few listens, something shifted in me. Is there another angle to this? Instead of speaking to a generic audience, is he talking to one specific person? Suggesting what they can do with the memory of him now that it’s over.
See how easy it is to lay all sorts of fat overthinking blankets on everything?
It is, in a way, an instructional song. About moving on and not dwelling in the past while still acknowledging it. But if we’re going to overthink something, let’s really have at it. There’s one line I could not let go of.
“Bury me in the last few lines
Of an obituary for these trying times”
The trying times is the collapse of the relationship, I guess, but it got me thinking about obituaries. The sentiment is a bit conflicted. Like, 'hey, don’t waste too much time thinking about me—I ain’t worth a whole story. I’m a footnote, an afterthought, a throwaway line.' But knowing what goes into writing and obituary, there is a sense of selfishness there too.
Obituaries are a crafted summary of someone’s life, and you have to cherry pick the information that’s in there. It must be factually important to the person, as part of their life’s timeline. He WANTS to be remembered. It’s a conflict of interest. Forget about me and bury me, but also, whatever you do, don’t forget about me. If you’ve made the obituary, dude, you played a role in whatever glorious mess you’re talking about there.
It’s a good line to dissect. Beautiful and brutal at the same time.
Speaking of good lines:
“I ain’t no cowboy, but I can ride.
I ain’t no outlaw, but I’ve been inside.”
This right here is why we listen to country music. You don’t need to be an expert to ride and wrangle your own life. Yippee-ki-ay! What’s the 'being inside', though, country music man? Is it inside what he considers the prison of a bad relationship? Is it ACTUAL prison? Is it being inside oneself and knowing oneself? Juicy meaty sinewy words, open to interpretation. Delicious.
What sort of man is the narrator? A man of stone or a man of sand? Strong or weak? Perhaps he’s one that encounters and moves one. One who buries these things as tombstone memories to be visited and looked back upon, with fondness or not.
My favorite run in this song is the one on the word 'bars'—of the prison (although is suppose steel bars cold also be a knife?), of the bars of a song, of bar-bars and saloon doors swinging.
This Jason Isbell fella sure knows how to write a song. This Jason Isbell fella can really paint a picture, set you in a location for a microsecond, and plant your heart right there in it with him. Whatever the narrator is going for, the idea of burying the past and moving on—of finding a way to move on—I think that’s the key.
For Side A’s, Track 2: “Ride to Roberts”, from the get-go we feel something sweeter in the air. No bodies here. Just the start of something new. There are memories being planted and everything’s going great. The stickiness of locational memory and space and feelings to begin the storybook of it. The cowboy hats, their table, a place that retains—or will retain—significance as a settling place in a time of happiness.
I hear tell this is called the honeymoon period. Things are green and beautiful. He’s open. Heck, he's even giving up the half of the closet.
But is there an underbelly of doom to it? I dunno. I had a flash of thought at the line,
“And I don't say things that I don't mean
And you're the best thing I've ever seen”
Sweet talk. But it also sounds like one of those lines you overhear when a couple are arguing in low tones at another table in a restaurant. A plea of sorts. The things fall apart of it. Saying you love someone when you don’t anymore. And in that low-tone argument I just made up, the next line is him saying, “Why would I lie?”
Projection is fun. Is he just sweet talking? Is he being tentative as he tries to find his new love and I’m just being a doomsday prepper? Probably that last one.
Because the narrator wants to walk the righteous path, but there are ditches either side—and who knows if it’s alcohol or infidelity or misfortune or just plain falling out of love—and he’s well aware that just when you think you’ve got it all under control, the world knocks you on your ass again and you're in one of those damn ditches.
I mean, at least he’s saddling up again. Having another go. Look at him, clearing space for her in an empty room, which could be metaphorically his heart or more literally in his home.
Side note: the "Bachelorettes that don't know where they are" line is an atmospheric banger. I can hear the woo-woo party from here. Where are those gals now, I wonder? Probably riding a vibe check of their own.
Side A, Track 3: Eileen. Welcome to the blame.
Breakups inevitably put you on a rollercoaster of feelings and this song set me at the top of anger and whooshed me on down at high velocity. All while singing a girl’s name. It was fantastic.
It’s the "you should've seen this coming sooner" gaslighting. It’s all her fault? She couldn’t be told. Not your fault. What an asshole.
“My own behavior was a shock to me.”
Yeah, I know you. (Also, my own behavior has caught me off guard, so I guess I know myself too.)
I’m so conflicted by this story, and perhaps it has hit a raw memory from my past to some degree. That’s all I’ll say to that. We’re all capable of being assholes, but my guy, we’re also all culpable in these behaviors. You can’t shirk all responsibility just because she should’ve seen it coming. Maya Angelou said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” and that's great, but I just wish you didn’t have to get involved to learn that lesson.
The saddest line in the whole thing is:
“I mean to be alone for all my days.”
Yeah, that’s the way. The world is littered with ‘get out first’ people who do this to protect themselves. On the flip side, the world is also littered with people who think THEY will be the one to FIX that person. It’s not enough to put your hands up to being a mess. Fix YOURSELF. Or as David Lynch in Twin Peaks once said, albeit about a different subject and in character; “Fix your heart or die.”
All my conflicted emotion toward the song aside, it’s dark and lovely in its own way. A punch. I think I needed to really get mad about something and I’m glad this flashed in my pan.
Hands down my favorite song on the record is Side A’s, Track 4: “Gravelweed”.
It’s a recognition song.
Of our own complicity in things. Of how we can use people for our own devices to get ahead without even realizing it. How we get we want from people at the time we need… whatever we need, then through the evolution of that person helping us grow, we grow out and away from them. We’re all users!
It’s also an apology of sorts.
As I mentioned, I didn’t read contextual musings about these songs or his relationship or divorce before I wrote any of this, so I’m assuming this relationship was long and started young. If this song is about their relationship, that is. She helped him to grow and now they’ve grown apart.
“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”
The melodies line. That’s has to be a wink to songs like “Cover me Up”, written in the time of the early love in the relationship, and his words coming back to laugh at him. No longer giving it the sweetness or glint of prettiness. Man, the whiff of magnolia is strong in here.
But let’s step away from Jason Isbell and think of it more broadly. What are the properties of a gravel weed? Ambition is a big one. They pick the toughest place to grow in the harshest conditions. On a gravel road. In the hardest ground. But ambition ain’t enough. They need help and nurturing if they’re gonna make it.
People always talk about the growing of it. The evolution of self. But growth at what cost? In this case, it cost the relationship and perhaps it’s always inevitable. But what if we apply it to our own lives? Aren’t we all gravelweeds at the start? Raised by loving parents who, at some point, we’re gonna flip on like a house and sell that love down the river as we grow on without them? Our poor mothers. Our poor fathers. I mean, that’s assuming you had parents like that. Gravelweeds are hardy. Some make it on their own. Good for you.
All theorizing aside—I’m just Music|Response-ing here—I love this song. It’s got a sense of loss and recognition to it. We use people and sometimes it just doesn’t last. And it’s OK to be sorry about it and recognize your part in it.
The vibe is a search for forgiveness. Maybe?
Track 5, “Don’t be tough” is the final song on Side A.
Let’s not overthink a list song. List songs are simple and when you’re working through anything, whether it’s a breakup or anxiety or a bad vibe, you crave simplicity. You appreciate anything that takes decision making out of the equation so you can focus on getting out of the house every day.
This vibe shift is a list of things you can say to yourself to keep going, to keep moving, to not sink into sadness or immobility or be paralyzed by life and just helps you keep working through all the damn shit that’s swirling around you.
Affirmations.
Incantations.
Simple instructions at the bathroom mirror.
It’s a 12 steps song of sorts. A mantras song. A sticky note song. A ‘live, laugh, love’ fridge magnet of things to boost your confidence to drag yourself along.
“Don’t be tough before you have” is like a preemptive warning to the tyranny of self-preservation and putting up your walls. You know like… don’t obey in advance. Be brave. Try things on. Let love knock you on your ass
There are the no brainers. Don’t forget to eat. Get enough sleep. Don’t be selfish. Be a good human. Remember these things and you can do it—you can survive this vibe. Just break it down to the basic elements. Then get yourself up, brush yourself off, and start all over again.
Cliched? I don’t care. This is the kind of vibe shifting kick in the confidence I need when I’m feeling helpless. Sometimes you really do need a good keep calm and carry on. I can't believe I just said that.
Speaking of love knocking you on the ass, let’s flip over to Side B, Track 1: “Open and Close.”
After heartache, do we dare to love again? How do we open ourselves up to it when there is an equal chance of it failing or working out?
When the song began with a line about a fireplace being LED and not real, I thought the whole thing was going to be about how nothing is real. The exterior fakery of us all. But no. Wrong.
The narrator launches into the tentative meanderings of maybe kinda sorta getting back on the horse of it all but being afraid. Afraid of his anger, of his desire for change, or that things won’t last. Afraid of, just like the doorman, “letting the right people in.”
Day after day after day after day is repeated and I think that’s the key. Time passes and eventually, he’s ready. Eventually, we’ll all be ready.
The titular track of this record, Side B, Track 7: “Foxes in the Snow” seems to be a simple love song. The narrator lists all the things he loves about his new love, and I think is comparing the ease of it to the soul crushing struggle of the last one. Possibly the only song I’ve ever heard which mentions Diphenhydramine.
Anyway, it’s a lovely ambling song with a sweetness. Her friends are the foxes and the blood in the snow suggests to me that when they leave they maybe tear him to shreds a bit? I don't know. Something fishy there. Also, he says he loves her friends “the ones I know” and you know me—I see the negative in everything—so why has she not introduced you to everyone, narrator? Hmmm? Is there something she’s not sharing?
I’m not going to read too much into this one. It’s simple. He loves his new love and let’s just leave it at that. Some things just aren’t that deep.
Side B, Track 8: “Crimson and Clay” is a bit of an outlier on this record. I’m not saying it doesn’t fit, but the breakup here is not with a person but with the narrator’s own past. A breakup with where he grew up.
The rural feel of it makes me very homesick. I grew up on a farm, and the dirt of it is a very strong memory. It was a specific color and texture and after rain the smell of it mixes in my memory along with the native grass and eucalypt. The sense memory of rural clay is strong.
There might be an actual story behind this one, but I don’t know it, so I’ll just say at times you want to go home. Life out here is hard, and here he is talking about how the highway didn’t kill him (which I assuming is touring and life on the road), and I’m not sure if "that trailer fire in Arkansas" is an actual trailer fire or a metaphor for something else being destroyed.
The point is, I think, that sometimes the loneliness is too much. Sometimes you spiral out in the city (which I think is common for farm kids who are just raised with so much SPACE). Sometimes you want to go back home and wallow in the childhood memory of licking a spoon in a kitchen (I have that memory with my Mum, too). Sometimes you just want to crawl back to a place you feel safe and feel that dirt beneath your fingernails.
But is the place in this story safe? Because along with that spoon licking memory is this:
“Little noose in a locker, brown eyes crying in the hall
Rebel flags on the highway, wooden crosses on the wall”
Woof. Sometimes you have to go back to remember why you had to get out.
The clay will always be there. This is where you come from and you can acknowledge that too. But it’s enough to keep it under your nails. It’s ok to visit. But it’s also ok to get the hell out.
“Good While it Lasted”, Side B, Track 9. Is this one about marriage, or is this about the search for new love and not finding anything that’s gonna go past the initial first blush? Is the narrator the one looking for something more long term and not finding it?
Maybe. This song feels very sad to me. He is the perpetual seeker of someone to share more than a bed. Is that his only motivation? If we look at him as having a lot of internal conflict and, well, issues, he casts about for love as though it's a drug that will calm him in some way. Something that will stop his internal forces from attacking him.
“With your head on my shoulder, my soldiers retreated
It was good while it lasted”
Self-medication using other people. Now THAT’s a vibe.
“And all that I wanted was all that I had
And it was good while it lasted.”
Just you and that other person. I think that’s the moment talking.
And now we arrive firmly and squarely at what I believe to be the definitive divorce song on the record, Side B’s Track 10: “True Believer”
There’s so much to dig into here, but… I’m only going to touch lightly upon this wreckage. Take some photos of the damage. Some thoughts for the report.
We launch right into the action with this lil’ bit of spice:
“Take your hand off my knee, take your foot off my neck
Why are y'all examining me like I'm a murder suspect?”
When people break up, everyone within orbit of that relationship will be forced to take a side. It happens. And here, the narrator seems to feel like he is perhaps taking a little too much heat? I’m sure if I read up on the gossip, there’d be blame game’s going on, but I don’t care to and I get the gist. He started out a True Believer. He says so. I think everyone at the start of marriage is optimistic that they’re gonna make it. And yet, here we are with this song.
Verse after verse of brutal actions. Booze. Dangerous memories of bad behavior. It’s ROUGH.
“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.”
BURN IT ALL DOWN! Or… wait? Is the match the other woman? More juicy spice.
While he may have been a true believer in the relationship in the start, the hopefulness I found at the end of this song is that the true belief is not found in one relationship but in love itself. If you believe in love, you can keep moving.
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
So when we pass on the highway, I'll smile and I'll wave
And I'll always be a true believer, babe
Related but off the topic of this record. The line: “When we pass on the highway, I’ll smile and wave.” Reminds me of that Paul Kelly song “I can’t believe we were married.” and this refrain:
Now sometimes we see each other on the street
Maybe at a hotel or some party
We say hello then we have to go
I can't believe we were married
The distance will come, and with it, hopefully, some fondness and recognition of a time long gone that did have some good parts. But for now, in this song “True Believer” we get the warts and all of it.
The final song of this whole walk is Side B, Track 11: “Wind Behind the Rain” which wraps it up the record on what I think is a note of hope. It’s like a promise song. A song that sets up the dream of expectation of a long future together.
I love you like the morning loves the afternoon
Like the prairies love the plains
If you leave me now, I'll just come running after you
I'll be the wind behind the rain
A threat if ever I heard one. Just kidding. What a pretty little song. And I love the line “I wasn’t even fishing when I saw you.” I’ve tried that technique for years. No luck yet.
And that’s a wrap on this record. If you're still here, thanks for reading. And now I shall share what I have learned. The tea!
Actually, no. I won’t. Maybe a splash. I will admit it was fun going back and reinterpreting songs and lines and finding more weight to them now that I've read more about Jason Isbell. But I like that I had the freedom and dum-dum-ness to just listen and apply my own response varnishes without influence. I was unburdened by backstory. Oh, the glory!
Did I get some of it wrong? Not in my opinion. There is no wrong in Music | Response. The artist puts it out. That’s their job. I listen and receive. That’s mine. I believe I have fulfilled my part of this bargain.
Briefly, I can tell you that the last song “Wind after the rain”—the most hopeful song on the record in my mind—was written for his brother’s wedding, and Robert's in Ride to Roberts is an actual bar.
It is a divorce record, and this has been established, but I think that ultimately, it’s a love record. All divorce records are about love.
When we are hurt by love, there is the fallout from it. The anger, the pain, the fear of what’s next. To get through it—to change the vibe—we strip ourselves down to our most basic elements. Some choose to buy sportscars. Others choose to write songs.
Jason Isbell stripped himself down to his most basic components, chords and a particular set of skills at applying emotion and setting to words. And for that I'm grateful. I found great solace in spending time with this record. I really just needed a man and his guitar. A vintage 1940 Martin 0-17, as I have since learned. And that's all my moment called for.
Someone on reddit described this record as being a ‘personal status update’ for Jason Isbell’s love life and I find that to be an incredibly sad take. Why? Because I think you miss a lot of the themes in the work if you think it’s just him singing about one specific situation. It’s fun to know the touchstones of where lines originate, but if we do that—if we assume this is straight up Jason Isbell talking as himself and not a character—then all we are left with is a biased narrator.
I say to you, it doesn’t need the context. It’s just some stories and feelings held together with some real-life glue. The ‘true glue’ is love. And sometimes that's all the vibe you need.
Apply its force wherever you need it and shift with care.
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Author's note: Apologies to all Jason Isbell fans out there for my astounding lack of knowledge about his oeuvre.
You want context? I'll give you context
Some stuff to read:
"Jason Isbell confronts the pain of divorce, and the possibility of new love" - NPR
"Jason Isbell on developing his unique acoustic approach for ‘Foxes in the Snow’" - Guitar Player
"Jason Isbell Takes the Solo Spotlight on ‘Foxes in the Snow’" - Acoustic Guitar
"Jason Isbell on what those old love songs mean now" - Billboard Magazine
"Great Acoustics: Jason Isbell’s 1940 Martin 0-17" - Acoustic Guitar
"Jason Isbell Isn’t Hiding Easter Eggs: New Album Ponders Love Through Honesty, Not Truthfulness" - Forbes. Paywall, but I still had a free read left so good luck! I feel attacked with this quote:
“I’m not hiding easter eggs here,” 46-year-old Isbell explains. “I’m trying to make art. It’s not a podcast. This is a record. And they never get it right. Nobody ever gets it right.”