Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
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CD Details
Artist: Fleet FoxesEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2008-06-03
Music Label: Sub Pop
Soundtracks:
- Sun it Rises
- White Winter Hymnal
- Ragged Wood
- Tiger Mountain Peasant Song
- Quiet Houses
- He Doesn't Know Why
- Heard Them Stirring
- Your Protector
- Meadowlarks
- Blue Ridge Mountains
- Oliver James
Music reviews of Fleet Foxes
Music Review: A Musical Space to Live In
Rating: 5 Stars
"Fleet Foxes" was not at all what I expected, but it has turned out to be a rewarding investment. The album began turning up on my Amazon recommendations shortly after I picked up the new Sigur Ros recording. Seattle's Fleet Foxes have very little in common with the experimental Icelanders, aside from a similar release date and an ear for ambience. They are a folky, song-based vocal group with relatively short, tuneful songs. As such, the Fleet Foxes are aligned within a strong tradition of American pop music that allows them to be both nostalgic and timely.
The most pervasive influence on "Fleet Foxes" is "Pet Sounds" era Beach Boys. For those with attuned listening, the Fleet Foxes have taken an obvious page from the "Smile" songbook. Pulsing pianos, bass and guitars in doubled melodies, textural drumwork, and reflective lyrics delivered in harmony all recall this experimental period in Brian Wilson's career. Paradoxically, the Fleet Foxes "folky" undertones seem to trump Wilson's characteristic "studio-as-instrument" approach. As a result, the tunes are not quite as orchestral in scope - you will hear no bass harmonica and few radical key changes. Even vocally, the Fleet Foxes' harmonies are more choral, rather than the tightly harmonized Beach Boys barbershop style.
As a part of this American "pop baroque" music tradition, it goes without saying that the Fleet Foxes are influenced by classic, songwriting-style rock. It is actually quite difficult, however, to pin down these influences. At times, there is a hint of Neil Young at his most melancholy or U2 in their more organic stages, or perhaps melodic turns reminiscent of Coldplay. Additionally, I experienced an expansive, 21st century ambience, which allows "Fleet Foxes" to exist in a space that is simultaneously otherworldly and tangible, organic and ethereal. As I attempted to specifically pin down exactly who I was hearing in their sound, my list just seemed to grow longer and longer. I felt like there was just one band that would sum the Fleet Foxes up, but that hypothetical band's identity just kept floating out of reach.
Then I realized - perhaps they are a genuinely original voice expressing something new within a well-defined genre. All music comes from somewhere, and although Fleet Foxes can be perceived as derivative, they wear their influences on their collective sleeves in a unique pastiche. This is true in the literal sense, as well. The CD comes in a LP-ish sleeve with a vignette of sorts written by lead singer Robin Pecknold. He talks about the uncanny ability for music to indelibly stamp parts of our life experience, citing personal experiences with recordings by the Beach Boys and Radiohead. His observations certainly ring true, and the artists that he uses as examples in the story definitely loom largely in the Fleet Foxes' sound.
THE LOWDOWN: As the liner notes suggest, some recordings stamp our experiences in unexplainable ways. "Fleet Foxes" has already seemed to do that for this time of my life, and I feel fortunate to have stumbled across an album that has that potential. While I suggest all of the tracks for one reason or another, a single "sample" listen will not do. This is an album to be lived with to be really appreciated.
Description of Fleet Foxes
Seattle's Fleet Foxes traffic in baroque harmonic pop. They draw influences from the traditions of folk, pop, choral, gospel, sacred harp singing, West Coast music, traditional music from Ireland to Japan, film scores, and their NW peers. The subject matter ranges 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
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