Until this weekend, when I set out to remind myself of some of my favorite new releases of the year, I hadn't listened to Fleet Foxes for a while. I'd burned out. But that's because I listened to their debut intensely for about three months out of the year. I wonder—I can't guess—if I'll return to this album again and again in the future or if it will forever and always just remind me of 2008—that era of my life when my brilliant wife and I lived in West Hollywood, when we didn't have kids yet, back when I worked for a museum, that year we vacationed in Hawaii, the same year my dad passed away.
Did Fleet Foxes crack that permanent rotation barrier the way 07 picks like Andrew Bird's Armchair Apocrypha or Jens Lekman's Night Falls Over Kortedala did? Hard to say just yet. But even if it doesn't, that doesn't take anything away from the band or the record. It's a powerful album that managed to wrap itself around my life like a blanket. What better purpose should music serve?
And it is a powerful record. The big knock from its dissenters—and there are many, including pretty much every single one of my favorite fellow bloggers—is that it is somehow free of substance. Assuming you first discount the fact that this band is incredibly skilled—those harmonies ain't easy, buddy—the critique still only carries any weight with two tracks. My suggestion to the detractors is to try playing the record straight through, without the instrumental "Heard them Stirring" (which sounds too similar to Pet Sounds' instrumental title track) or the mantra-like "Quiet Houses."
Fleet Foxes has an aesthetic that is hard to get past, like a woman wearing too much perfume. You have to at least like the scent—er, sound—before you'll consider getting closer. If you don't like the current trend in indie rock of 70s-influenced folk rock (see also: Midlake, Feist), or if you don't like the current trend of lead singers obscuring their voices with some effect (reverb, fuzz, autotune, whatever), then your patience is going to run out with Fleet Foxes, and fast. Let's face it: the band breaks no new ground, sonically speaking. You have to find their ingredients compelling—the influences the band wears on its sleeve have to be pleasing and not irritating—before you can spend the time enjoying the album's finer points. For many, the journey with Fleet Foxes ends here.
For those of us that are beguiled by the sound, we get the added bonus of discovering the record's more subtle charms. Robin Pecknold is, in fact, a great songwriter: you can hear it in the details. I love the way "Sun it Rises" and "Ragged Wood" are held together by a thin thread of song structure. I love the way Pecknold breaks his phrasing in "Your Protector":
ther to be good
Tell your sis-
ter not to go
Tell your mo-
ther not to wait
Tell your fa-
ther I was good
I love the imagery of "White Winter Hymnal," which feels like a nursery rhyme. The nostalgic lyrics are about nothing so innocent as children walking in winter. But like any good nursery rhyme, the song is deceptively violent—the sole verse ends with a child bleeding in the snow, turning it "red like strawberries in the summertime." That last line makes the song borderline psychopathic: the narrator is an adult, watching over the children to ensure they don't hurt themselves. When one child does, the injury reminds the adult of another, faraway innocent season. Hey asshole—call 911! It reminds me of the "oh well" tone of the last line of "Rock-a-bye Baby."
I love the structure of the album's closer, "Oliver James": the first verse is a capella; the second finds Pecknold's acoustic guitar harmonizing with his vocal melody; then the final chorus returns to a capella. I know it's a small detail, but I love that the guitar is playing a harmony to the vocal rather than simply doubling the melody as so many indie guitarists do (off the top of my head: Elliott Smith, Death Cab, the Shins, Deerhunter, Nirvana).
I could go on. Fleet Foxes, if you let it, is full of small, well-thought details. For that reason—added of course to the band simply sounding beautiful—it is an outstanding album. Add to that their phenomenal live show—even better than the album—which says to me that this is a band that can and will top itself. What a start, though.
- Fleet Foxes: Your Protector
Tomorrow, my #2 pick as well as the rest of my 08 favorites.
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Posted by: guanacaste costa rica | July 14, 2010 at 07:49 PM