Jason Isbell has gone solo in more ways than one on his new album “Foxes in the Snow.” The album features Isbell, for the first time, all by himself playing an 85 year old guitar and singing songs about the break-up of his marriage to fellow singer-songwriter Amanda Shires and how he is carrying on without her.
It’s a very intimate performance by Isbell and starkly honest, as the songs he has written are divided between those dedicated to his new love and those that examine what went wrong.
Isbell and his ex-wife were famously the subject of an HBO documentary about his becoming sober after years on the road playing music and the challenges they faced as a couple.
“Foxes in the Snow” is an album so personal you get the feeling that’s why it is solo acoustic, simply because he didn’t want anyone else in the studio to second guess him. It’s the type of approach few artists can get away with but Isbell has earned the right to be so candid with his long-time fanbase.