Check out this review of the new Fleet Foxes album Helplessness Blues by Tone Audio.
“So now I’m older,” confesses Fleet Foxes leader Robin Pecknold on “Montezuma,” opening the band’s anticipated sophomore record with a sentiment that largely informs the intelligently crafted, complexly arranged, and gorgeously executed album. Indeed, feelings and realities of being older seemingly consume the sweet-timbered singer-songwriter, who usesHelplessness Blues as a platform for soul-searching, questioning personal identity, reflecting on life purposes, and contemplating existence.
Artists have long ruminated on these weighty matters, but one of the myriad reasons that make Fleet Foxes unique is that at no point does the group invoke self-pity, resort to cloying earnestness, or complain about fame as it raises deep questions that often yield no resolute answers. If the Seattle sextet had any detractors after releasing a 2008 full-length debut that landed on most critics’ Top Ten lists and staging shows that proved its natural harmonizing absolutely ethereal in scope, its latest creation should elevate the band to household-name status. Such is the spectral beauty, cohesive chemistry, and golden-hued ambition contained within.
Whether referred to as roots-rock, folk-rock, or the hipster-coined beardo-rock, the last several years have witnessed an inundation of bucolic music performed by bands that yearn for passed times and bygone environments. Mumford and Sons, Dawes, The Head and the Heart, and Blitzen Trapper are among the acts whose rustic fare evokes simpler times and pastoral pleasures while offering needed relief from a technology-dominant culture that’s far removed from the tranquil, down-home rootsiness conjured by acoustic instruments and easygoing singing. Fleet Foxes stand apart from their contemporaries and followers due to a basic fact: As demonstrated on this filler-free 12-song set, they are plainly superior, deeper, and more soulful than their peers. It’s a truth borne out every year in professional sports. Championship-winning teams claim immense talent and advanced skill sets. For all its romanticism, sheer will only takes you so far.
Whereas the band’s influences shone brightly on its debut, they recede further into the background onHelplessness Blues. Shades of Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the Incredible String Band give way to a mix that’s more original, involved, and modern. Fleet Foxes occupy an indefinable territory that both bridges and honors the Laurel Canyon past while taking the former period’s earthy, intricate, and natural elements into a present that delves further into go-for-broke blends of gospel, baroque, Americana, rock, psychedelic, and, on “The Shrine/An Argument,” even avant-garde jazz strains. The amount of time and care the group invested in its craft will be immediately evident to even the most casual listener; more than a year in the making, and captured at multiple studios,Helplessness Blues comes on like record on which every note is carefully considered but never overly polished or overwrought. It’s a difficult line to navigate, and yet, Fleet Foxes and co-producer Phil Ek convert their Swiss-wristwatch-precise obsessiveness into transcendent art.
“So, guess I got old,” vocally shrugs Pecknold on “Lorelai,” continuing to explore a topic that occupies him from the start and stays with him until the concluding “Grown Ocean,” a stomping upbeat tune that reveals glimpses of unvarnished optimism and finds him declaring “I’m as old as the mountains.” Amidst the group’s arching heaven-bound harmonies, delicate fingerpicking, booming drums, and majestic melodies, Pecknold engages in blunt self-evaluation, his confessional meditations on uncertainty, withdrawal, and responsibility contributing to an ebb-and-flow of swelling choral tides and three dimensional textures. Songs pour into diverse structural molds, ranging from “The Plains/Bitter Dancer” suite which commences with layered vocals that sound as if they were plucked from the heights of an European cathedral ceiling and unexpectedly transitions, via flute passages into an uptempo romp, to the concise, closeup, and solitary hymnal “Blue Spotted Tail.”
Purity maintains as important a role as needle-pointed guitar motifs and immediate, wide-open production. Slight pauses, reverb baths, and ornate flourishes don’t decorate as much as flavor and reinforce existing patterns. Such detailing enhances the woody percussion and gypsy sway on “Bedouin Dress,” underscores the dips and dives in Pecknold’s vocals during “Someone You’d Admire,” and allows “Sim Sala Bim” to emerge with equal parts orchestral flair and private abandon. And it’s the latter—as experienced through Pecknold and Co.’s aspirations, hallucinations, desires, and innermost thoughts—that spikes Helplessness Blues with the mystical intensity and engaging hypnotism of a fever dream.
“All these voices I’ll someday have turned off then/And I will see you when I’ve woken/I’ll be so happy just to have spoken/I’ll have so much to tell you about it then,” Pecknold tenders towards the conclusion of “Grown Ocean,” singing like a drifter in no rush to awaken from his sleep.
–Bob Gendron
Read the full article here.Labels: fleet foxes, records, vinyl
“So now I’m older,” confesses Fleet Foxes leader Robin Pecknold on “Montezuma,” opening the band’s anticipated sophomore record with a sentiment that largely informs the intelligently crafted, complexly arranged, and gorgeously executed album. Indeed, feelings and realities of being older seemingly consume the sweet-timbered singer-songwriter, who usesHelplessness Blues as a platform for soul-searching, questioning personal identity, reflecting on life purposes, and contemplating existence.
Artists have long ruminated on these weighty matters, but one of the myriad reasons that make Fleet Foxes unique is that at no point does the group invoke self-pity, resort to cloying earnestness, or complain about fame as it raises deep questions that often yield no resolute answers. If the Seattle sextet had any detractors after releasing a 2008 full-length debut that landed on most critics’ Top Ten lists and staging shows that proved its natural harmonizing absolutely ethereal in scope, its latest creation should elevate the band to household-name status. Such is the spectral beauty, cohesive chemistry, and golden-hued ambition contained within.
Whether referred to as roots-rock, folk-rock, or the hipster-coined beardo-rock, the last several years have witnessed an inundation of bucolic music performed by bands that yearn for passed times and bygone environments. Mumford and Sons, Dawes, The Head and the Heart, and Blitzen Trapper are among the acts whose rustic fare evokes simpler times and pastoral pleasures while offering needed relief from a technology-dominant culture that’s far removed from the tranquil, down-home rootsiness conjured by acoustic instruments and easygoing singing. Fleet Foxes stand apart from their contemporaries and followers due to a basic fact: As demonstrated on this filler-free 12-song set, they are plainly superior, deeper, and more soulful than their peers. It’s a truth borne out every year in professional sports. Championship-winning teams claim immense talent and advanced skill sets. For all its romanticism, sheer will only takes you so far.
Whereas the band’s influences shone brightly on its debut, they recede further into the background onHelplessness Blues. Shades of Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the Incredible String Band give way to a mix that’s more original, involved, and modern. Fleet Foxes occupy an indefinable territory that both bridges and honors the Laurel Canyon past while taking the former period’s earthy, intricate, and natural elements into a present that delves further into go-for-broke blends of gospel, baroque, Americana, rock, psychedelic, and, on “The Shrine/An Argument,” even avant-garde jazz strains. The amount of time and care the group invested in its craft will be immediately evident to even the most casual listener; more than a year in the making, and captured at multiple studios,Helplessness Blues comes on like record on which every note is carefully considered but never overly polished or overwrought. It’s a difficult line to navigate, and yet, Fleet Foxes and co-producer Phil Ek convert their Swiss-wristwatch-precise obsessiveness into transcendent art.
“So, guess I got old,” vocally shrugs Pecknold on “Lorelai,” continuing to explore a topic that occupies him from the start and stays with him until the concluding “Grown Ocean,” a stomping upbeat tune that reveals glimpses of unvarnished optimism and finds him declaring “I’m as old as the mountains.” Amidst the group’s arching heaven-bound harmonies, delicate fingerpicking, booming drums, and majestic melodies, Pecknold engages in blunt self-evaluation, his confessional meditations on uncertainty, withdrawal, and responsibility contributing to an ebb-and-flow of swelling choral tides and three dimensional textures. Songs pour into diverse structural molds, ranging from “The Plains/Bitter Dancer” suite which commences with layered vocals that sound as if they were plucked from the heights of an European cathedral ceiling and unexpectedly transitions, via flute passages into an uptempo romp, to the concise, closeup, and solitary hymnal “Blue Spotted Tail.”
Purity maintains as important a role as needle-pointed guitar motifs and immediate, wide-open production. Slight pauses, reverb baths, and ornate flourishes don’t decorate as much as flavor and reinforce existing patterns. Such detailing enhances the woody percussion and gypsy sway on “Bedouin Dress,” underscores the dips and dives in Pecknold’s vocals during “Someone You’d Admire,” and allows “Sim Sala Bim” to emerge with equal parts orchestral flair and private abandon. And it’s the latter—as experienced through Pecknold and Co.’s aspirations, hallucinations, desires, and innermost thoughts—that spikes Helplessness Blues with the mystical intensity and engaging hypnotism of a fever dream.
“All these voices I’ll someday have turned off then/And I will see you when I’ve woken/I’ll be so happy just to have spoken/I’ll have so much to tell you about it then,” Pecknold tenders towards the conclusion of “Grown Ocean,” singing like a drifter in no rush to awaken from his sleep.
–Bob GendronLabels: fleet foxes, records, vinyl
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