Customer Reviews

Fleet Foxes

5 star:		(114)
4 star:		(40)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

The Fleet Foxes are a rock band that sounds like no other -- imagine a pastoral choir overwhelming a sweeping folk-rock band, in the middle of a sunlit forest in the spring.

That's about the sound of the Fleet Foxes' self-titled debut album -- it's a stream of lush, jangly folk pop, edged with a touch of baroque and country-rock. While their "Sun Giant" EP was an excellent introduction, it's nothing compared to the rough-edged grandeur of the full-length album, with its glorious instrumentation and vivid lyricism.

The only really offputting part of the album is the opening five seconds, when an off-key chorale sings, "Reeeeed squirrel in the morning/Reeeeeeeed squirrel in the evening..."

Then the song suddenly melts into a gentle acoustic guitar shimmering with keyboard. "The sun rises, over my head/Hold me dear, into the night/Sun it will rise soon in the morn..." Robin Pecknold sings with all the solemnity of a choirboy. His voice soars over the steelier riffs and thumping drums, only to settle down with, "The sun rising, dangling there/Golden and fair, in the sky..."

Wow. When an intro is that lovely, just imagine what the songs that follow are going to be like.

In this case, it's the shifting folky "White Winter Hymnal," with its kettle drums and beautiful campfire harmonies ("I was following... I was following... I was following the pack/all swallowed in their coats/with scarves of red tied 'round their throats"), followed by the endearingly energetic rocker "Ragged Wood" ("You should come back home/back on your own now!").

It gets no less endearing after that: Gentle bluesy ballads, jangly folk-pop with lots of squiggly mellotron, sweeping pop chorales, bouncy countryish rockers with lots of intertwined guitars. Things get quieter near the end -- "Fleet Foxes" ends with a trio of lower-key, folkier ballads, sometimes with nothing more than Pecknold's voice and a guitar.

There's something very warm and welcoming about the Fleet Foxes' music, and there's hardly a song on their self-titled album that doesn't contain that sunniness. And though the bittersweet songs focus on the usual topics -- family, love, lost friends -- there's a strong feeling of pastoral beauty, especially since they're sprinkled with meadowlarks, wood-women, "quivering forests," Tennessee and grassy graves.

In fact, the lyrics are crammed with vivid ("And, Michael, you would fall/and turn the white snow red as strawberries") and striking language ("I hold a cornucopia and a golden crown"). At times, the band's lyrics are pure poetry ("Wanderers this morning came by/Where did they go?/Graceful in the morning light/To banner fair/To follow you softly/In the cold mountain air...").

These songs are wrapped in lush melodies of striking music, which happily swirl together folk, classic earthy rock, pop, baroque and a bit of country. And an coustic guitar is the lead instrument here; sometimes it's all by itself, and sometimes it's intertwined with a smooth mix of other instruments -- hollow drums, rippling mellotron, steely guitar, and a hint of harp being plucked somewhere.

And finally there's Robin Pecknold. He sounds a little off-key in the spare ballads, but in the more complex songs he sounds sweet, strong and truly beautiful, especially when he does that soaring thing. And I have to say, I'm a sucker for the band's sunny chorale sound -- the harmonies really make those melodies sound exquisite.

The Fleet Foxes' self-titled debut is one of the best albums I've heard all year, with its blend of styles and bittersweetly lovely songs. Haunting and truly lovely.

I heard something on WXPN that stirred me from my coffee and newspaper, but all I caught aside from the almost shape note singing was the name Fleet Foxes. Then someone I've been sharing musical knowledge with put in quite a few good words regarding this and Sun Giants. I eventually got around to picking this up at the local independant music store. I played it through a couple times and threw it on the pile. Then I started hearing it in the distance. A soft baroque chiming in the back of my head. Not the Zombies not Procol Harum nor Left Banke. Oddly rootsy. Sad like the last days of Summer. I ended giving it my full attention and played it over and over with special attention to Hymnal.
It was then I realized that they were the Beach Boys of Winter.

I picked up this CD on a whim when seeing it in the "Customers Also Bought These Items" when looking at a Decemberists CD. At first, the CD did not speak to me, with the exception of White Winter Hymnal, and the songs generally sounded the same. After about 3 listens through however, I had achieved a greater appreciation for the melodies that had been sewn into this LP, and some of them stuck in my head for days (especially Ragged Wood). The vocals are outstanding, reminding me at times of the band America, but Fleet Foxes are also able to invoke elaborate mental images of train whistles and wind with their harmonization. Many of the songs are written in a progressive style, and at times you may think you are on a different track number than you actually are, but Fleet Foxes don't miss a beat in delivering an altogether solid album from start to finish.

I had a bootleg of this album a month before the official release. (Not to worry, I bought the cd here as soon as it came out) It took this long to write a review because it's not an easy album to fully comprehend in the short term. After the nearly perfect and perhaps more accessible debut ep Sun Giant, this full-length cd was far more difficult to warm up to. But just as in life, where nothing worth doing is ever easy, the brilliance of this album becomes more and more obvious over time.

Comparisons to other bands might seem easy, but ultimately are only useful as a guidepost to a type of sound that might interest you as a listener. So sure, if you like any of the 70's (or 00's) bands with a folk/rock/freak sound you may be open to the Foxes. If Led Zep was your main 70's band, you may want to look elsewhere. The Beach Boys may be one band that could be argued to be a significant influence. (As songwriter and front man Robin Pecknold would probably acknowledge.) Yet they sound NOTHING at all like them. Nothing. But the song structures, the harmonies, the lack of glorious guitar solos (which some wrongly refer to as "chops") might owe more to the Beach Boys than CSN&Y, (who many seem to forget were a super group that could rock out with the best of them when they wanted to).

The most striking thing about the Fleet Foxes, what separates them from most other bands out there today, is not what you have heard. It's not the harmonies. It's not the reverb or the beards or Seattle or the massive buzz surrounding them. It's the most basic of all things when it comes to music. The songwriting.

Pecknold, at 21 or 22, has already composed a collection of classics. At least six or seven of the eleven songs on this album are standards to their fans and will be screamed for and sung along with twenty years from now if we are all lucky enough to be around by then. I kid you not... The other songs are nearly as good, making it the most listenable album to come along not just this year, but probably in many, many years.

If you feel like it, you can read my little battle with Hercules_doh in the comments section of his review. Though I feel even more strongly now about the band and the album than at that time, Meadowlarks still stands out as perhaps the only miss between the first two albums. And it's a very near miss at that. It's actually quite beautiful, but the lyrics at one point become a little too affected to be taken seriously. A minor quibble to be sure.

The best thing for fans of indie music is that this band will never be for everyone. As hot as they are right now, there are already haters out there and ears that are just not open to this kind of sound. As beautiful as the songs are, as sweet as the harmonies are and as absent the screeching guitar solos are: do not be fooled. This is serious music that is just different enough to keep it interesting for a lot of fans but will scare away the massive audiences that would probably end up ruining it.

Eccentric and familiar at the same time; the self titled full length from Seattle's Fleet Foxes is nothing short of spellbinding. Borrowing heavily from olden-folk and country-rock, the album packs a futuristic vintage punch, although it's much more like a subtle kiss on the cheek. Peckhold's voice is always in reverberating reverence to the past, and the band's playing constitutes the very same greatness. The music is full of a mystically optimistic spirit; graceful and invigorating, all finespun into a genius work of art unlike anything else. Easily one of the most original and beautiful albums to come along on a long time.

Saw these guys on SNL, and after the horrible musical guests SNL's had, they seemed like they were from another planet. Their harmonies are choir-like, though their melodies have a strength and ornamented contour of their own. "Fleet Foxes" has the unity of a concept album, consistent in presenting different facets of an overall experience. Within this world they create, are moments of happiness, wonder, tragedy, mystery and more.

The thing is, they don't let anything obvious pervade - the work excels in its ambiguity, its shading and transition. Aside from the more definate verses/lyrics, there are instrumentals, interludes (both instrumental and vocal) that begin to seem like events themselves, usually melancholy and mysterious, sometimes suspenseful, ALWAYS well timed. Speaking as a composer, their music is suprisingly patient and thought out - the drama of it is understated but archs effectively: ("Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" builds to an emotional confession, then tinges it with a fading minor reprise).

Musically, they do have alot of reverb, but it works, in fact it's essential to the ambiguity they create, and the choir-like beauty. It still seems intimate to me, and the instruments and lead vocal remain defined.

Lyrically, rural imagery follows the music's lead (or vice versa?), and lyrics frequently hint at something that has happened or is about to happen - but the Fleets leave it at that - creating a haunted and universal effect.

Songs:
1. Sun It Rises: melancholy, majestic opener
2. White Winter Hymnal: upbeat, melody has a charming arc (Pet Sounds anyone?)
3. Ragged Wood: a multifaceted, 3 part "experience", finale wins out.
4. Tiger Mt. Peasant Song: pensive, renaissance beauty and another climactic finale.
5. Quiet Houses: a sunny instrumental w/ sparse 'hooks'. I'm a sucker for Maj7th chords.
6. He Doesn't Know Why: several verses of a soaring melody, bursting into an unrestrained hook, soon humanized by harmonies.
7. Heard Them Stirring: an instrumental more pensive than "Quiet..", rollercoaster of different shadings.
8. Your Protector: most aggressive song, effective in its firey drama
9. Meadowlark: intimate catharsis after "..Protector", remarkable senstivity.
10. Blue Ridge Mountains: impossibly beautiful, seems to be the realization of alot of musical foreshadowing earlier in the album. Finale wins again.
11. Oliver James: Simple, understated and seemingly optimistic end.

...I joined just to write this, still perplexed about how good it is. they take so many influences that are musically meaningful and create a world all their own.

In a recent ranking from the London Times, the inaugural effort from Fleet Foxes was voted the best record of 2008. Ordinarily this kind of "official" recognition usually invites the blowback from every corner of the music world who in dissing the newcomers offer countless more deserving alternatives that are normally a homage to personal taste and the coolness of obscurity than an objective look (if that's even possible) at the entire range of worthwhile (and not so worthwhile) nominees. In this regard, reader comments to the article did not disappoint.

Please forgive me if I sidestep that no-win conversation and just go from the gut - Fleet Foxes is a really strong and inspired first effort. The "best" of 2008? Not quite. However, if you're a fan of Britain's golden age of Progressive Rock - Renaissance, The Moody Blues, Genesis, Yes, ELP, Tull, 10cc, and Blondel - and enjoy healthy overtones of Neil Young, The Eagles and some very tight harmonies ala Lindsey Buckingham, then Fleet Foxes channels them all with precision and great result.

Honestly, there are too many doppelgangers and other influences at work here to consider this release the best of the year but it is hard to argue the records merit when the "borrowing" is from such a rich vein of source material and is executed so well. In the meantime, I am looking forward to hearing more from a very promising band as they discover their own sound.

Fleet Foxes, another in the infinite line of contemporary "animal" bands; what a special record! I'm not really well versed enough to see in it comparisons to Wolf Mother or Wolf Parade or Deerhoof or Deerhunter or Grizzly Bear, Panda Bear or Huggy Bear (ok, so that's a blast from the past).

What I do see in it is a reflection of a more distant tradition. There are compositional references, vocal styles, and arrangement nods to those more "baroque pop" 60's Beach Boys records; the epic scope and the lushness and depth of pop complexities of Clube da Esquina an essential 1970's record by Milton Nasciamento and Lo Borges; yet there's also the spaciousness and intimacy of last year's Bon Iver record, For Emma, Forever Ago. Like those references, the music is absolutely listenable and deeply enjoyable and somehow makes you feel like you're enjoying something quite special.

I love it.

In brief:
Fleet Foxes sound a fair amount like My Morning Jacket and (less) Band of Horses, but make more beautiful/pastoral/folksy music than either MMJ or BoH.

Recommended tracks:
White Winter Hymnal
Quiet Houses
He Doesn't Know Why
Oliver James
(in order of track, not preference)

One of the better releases of '08 so far, strongly recommended.
Also get Fleet Foxes' Sun Giant EP for the sake of Mykonos, probably their most accessible single.

Fleet Foxes are the once and future kings of the currently thriving "bearded indie folk" music scene (along with the likes of Iron & Wine, Bon Iver and Sea Wolf), and there's a good reason for that. In addition to the heaps of accolades from indie music gatekeepers like Pitchfork (who picked this record and its prequel EP "Sun Giant" as the best of 2008),there's the music itself - at once timeless and thoroughly contemporary. Rare is the band that can deliver compositions which seem to have been dredged up from some lost archive of American musical history (the classic example being the debut record from The Band), but the songs on this record could as easily have come from 1800s Appalachia as from Seattle in the 2000's.

Shimmering, echoey harmonies combined with delicately eclectic instrumentation, and lyrical imagery that conjures up everything from Edward Gorey illustrations ("White Winter Hymnal" with its line about "following the pack all swallowed in their coats/ with scarves of red tied round their throats/ to keep their little heads/ from falling in the snow...") to sun-drenched California beaches. That's Fleet Foxes - easily one of the most accomplished and beautiful releases of the past year.