Fleet Foxes

Big Fat Search

Binding: LP Record
Published: 2008-06-03

$15.18

Editorial Review:

2008 album from this Seattle based quintet. Fleet Foxes are, for lack of an imminently 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.
It's now twenty years since grunge emerged from then culturally isolated Seattle and Fleet Foxes, the eponymous debut album from the city's latest heroes, demonstrates just how much American independent rock has mutated in that time. The five young members of Fleet Foxes make up a very different sort of rock band, describing their own music as "baroque harmonic pop jams". Even that understates the depths of the quintet's effortless vocal harmonies and gently woozy, folky feel. Of their contemporaries only the enigmatic Midlake and My Morning Jacket at their most fragile come close, but neither could have cooked up the Beach Boys spiritual of "White Winter Hymnal" or its more powerful companion piece "Ragged Wood". In fact Fleet Foxes happily admit to aspiring to an earlier tradition--not just obvious antecedents like the Byrds, the Association, Neil Young and, especially, David Crosby's famously unfocussed solo album If Only I Could Remember My Name but ancient English folk songs and their later American descendents. All were hunted and gathered from the internet--songwriters Robin Pecknold and Skye Skjelset are barely in their twenties. Add a host of unlikely instruments and the results are stunning, the complete antithesis of mainstream stadium indie that has followed Arcade Fire. Still, the cover features a Bruegel painting of peasants that might have graced any Black Sabbath sleeve. In that way at least Fleet Foxes salute a local tradition. ---Steve Jelbert

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

Breughel, beards and beauty:

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... more info

Beautiful:

Beautiful haunting songs from an Appalachia in some alternate universe. I've been listening to this for a few weeks now and it's still growing on me.

Spiritual Connection to the Earth:

This is one of the most original albums I've heard over the last several years. Earthy folk ballads suffused with choir sound gives this album an Edenic feel. Many tracks sound like lush soundtracks accompanying a sojourn through green shimmering glades. But this music is not precious. It's earthy and feels authentic and never pretentious.
I don't read a lot of music reviews, but I have to assume Fleet Foxes have been compared to a band with a similar sensibility and sound--My Morning Jacket.more info

Gets old really quick:

So I was very excited to get this album. Previewing the tracks and reading all the great reviews it had to be a winner. But after listening through the album only a couple times I'm already tired of it. I have to say they did a great job but it's an album that you listen to every once in a while for me.

Tracks: