Fleet Foxes
Sub Pop, the same label that introduced the world to grunge, would turn around nearly two decades later and give us grunge’s placid antidote with Fleet Foxes’ transcendent self-titled debut album. The band’s baroque, bucolic indie folk couldn’t sound further away from the caffeinated buzz of Seattle—or any modern city for that matter. Instead, *Fleet Foxes* plants us in a woodsy, whimsical fairytale set sometime between the Renaissance (the album’s cover is a 1559 piece from Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder) and some distant sylvan future. The album opens at dawn with a playful a capella chant that leads into sweet Americana: “Sun risin’ over my head,” lead singer Robin Pecknold draws out hypnotically, his voice and guitar awash in reverb as warm as the sun soaking a wide-open field. The band builds from this beauty on “White Winter Hymnal,” with its echoing tom-toms enveloped in layered vocal harmonies that create an organic surround-sound feel, and the dynamic “Ragged Wood,” which pieces together shimmering strings for a spirited stop-and-go chase through the forest. The stunning wall-of-sound effect throughout—bolstered by instruments like the autoharp and Chinese zither and the quintet’s own sacred-harp singing—reaches its peak on “Heard Them Stirring,” a humming reverie that earning them Beach Boys comparisons without the need for lyrics. Still, just as the Bruegel cover reveals the devil’s in the details, darkness pervades the album: The hushed acoustic stunner “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” speaks of demons and deadly premonitions, while the flute-adorned “Your Protector” has us running with the devil at a heart-pounding pace. All of it—the earthly sounds and unearthly visions—linger long after, just like Pecknold’s final haunting howl on closer “Oliver James.”
Fleet Foxes are five. There are five of them, and they are from Seattle. They are, for lack of an eminently more marketable descriptor, a group trafficking in baroque harmonic pop. And the joy they derive in doing so is palpable. We feel it too. They are, self-described, not much of a rock band. With the help of credit cards, minimum wages, tip money, friends and family, Fleet Foxes crafted their first demo, and subsequently the Sun Giant EP and this debut full-length album, with family friend Phil Ek manning the rudder. Drawing influence from the traditions of folk music, pop, choral music and gospel, sacred harp singing, West Coast music, traditional music from Ireland to Japan, film scores, and their NW peers, Fleet Foxes ranges in subject matter from the natural world and familial bonds to bygone loves and stone cold graves. Robin Pecknold is in Fleet Foxes: “All we strove for with this record was to make something that was an honest reflection of who we are, citizens of the western United States who love all kinds of music and above all else love singing…” And we believe them.
Following their spectacular Sun Giant EP, Seattle-based Fleet Foxes’ full-length debut has a lot to live up to. Luckily, it more than delivers the goods: Incorporating a broad spectrum of styles—from Appalachian folk and AM country to classic rock and SoCal pop—Fleet Foxes create a personal synthesis of the music of their peers, their parents, and even their grandparents.
Delicately finger-picked acoustic guitars, four-part choral harmonies, more references to nature than an hour of Animal Planet—yep, this dusty road is well traveled, but Fleet Foxes stand out among indie rock's current flower-people revival by adding a subtle undercurrent of melancholy. Like the Altamont Hell's Angels…
They self-style themselves as a family business of ‘baroque harmonic pop jams,’ and as usual with bizarre hybrid genres, it works damn well.
Borrowing from ageless folk and classic rock (and nicking some of the best bits from prog and soft rock along the way), on their self-titled debut album Fleet Foxes don't just master the art of taking familiar influences and making them sound fresh again, they give a striking sense of who they are and what their world is like.