If Coyote Stories was the running start of The Crane Wives’ evolution from acoustic folk to folk-fusion, then Foxlore was the jump they were leading up to.  

The two albums were made simultaneously but released in two parts. Foxlore delves deeper into themes of personal transformation, introspection, and the complexities of human relationships. The album showcases the band’s evolution, blending their signature folk style with more expansive, resonant, experimental sounds. It’s a large step away from the band’s earlier, more acoustically driven work, embracing a fuller, more electric vibe, with tracks like ‘Down the River’ introducing a jam-band with a prominent drum solo, while “Ribs” offers an airy, atmospheric quality. The album also explores diverse musical genres, incorporating elements of New Orleans jazz in ‘Curses’ and psychedelic balladry in ‘Can’t Go Back’. While Coyote Stories introduced the shift in their genre, Foxlore drives it home by leaning into it and fully incorporating these new sounds into their existing style.  

Lyrically, Foxlore has a strong resemblance to its sister album in its storytelling, with each track serving as a vignette that transports listeners to different emotional landscapes. It feels rather like you were sitting around a campfire in Appalachia, with the band playing out folktales around you. It conjures imagery of the deep woods, waterfalls, and golden plains in the Midwest of America. The band’s harmonious vocals and thoughtful arrangements enhance the introspective quality of the album, making it a reflective listening experience, so it’s easy to be carried off to these remote places in your head, even if you’ve never been there. Which is quite a feat for a band, and I think is perhaps their most prominent achievement. It’s easy to tell a story, but it is another thing entirely to get your listener involved in it, to lure them into envisioning it, and become fully enveloped within the narrative of the song.  

As if The Crane Wives could get more impressive with their songwriting, the actual lyrics of the songs have immense layers in meaning. My favourite is ‘The Garden’, wherein a young woman begs her lover to bury her, before eventually switching and asking them to dig for her and pull her out of the earth. The garden is meant to be the garden of Eden, and the singer is asking to be buried to hide the sin of her romance and sexuality.  

The religious themes throughout the song paint her as a martyr to her own shame, “Lay me down, pour the dirt into our bed/ Tell the crows they can have their pound of flesh,” before coming to terms with herself and her lover and asking them to  “Get your hands dirty and rip up the garden/ Won’t you cut down that apple tree for me?” Her request to dig her back up is her accepting herself and finally being ready to be in the open with her lover. It deals heavily with themes of religious guilt and self-acceptance, something you wouldn’t expect out of a song with such a folksy tune. Yet another thing I love about this album is that you can’t predict what each song is about, and the fact that it’s a folk band does not lend itself to predictability.  

Regardless of your opinion of folk music, I hope you’ll consider giving Foxlore a listen. It turned 9 years old last month, and nearly a decade on, it still has an enchanting narrative quality unlike any other album I’ve heard.  

Fun Fact: The fox on the album cover is named Copernicus. 

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons