Some people are born with a knack for writing songs, and others are born with a knack for writing stories and happen to play guitar. The latter most qualifies Robin Pecknold, the not at all fresh faced, but very young still front-man of Seattle’s Fleet Foxes. His songs are nothing you’ll read about it in your next Commercial Songwriting textbook; they’re often meandering in structure, and even more yet similar in their characters and direction, but where these same traits plague someone like Conor Oberst, they couldn’t be more helpful to Pecknold’s aged and perspicacious narratives.
You’ll need to know some people; Robin’s brother shows up a lot, he’s the free-wheeling one who misses his flight due to the weather in Blue Ridge Mountains. Also Robin’s grandfather; apparently good with his hands (he built the family table in Oliver James, and the “wooden nest” in the aforementioned set of mountains. What makes these characters so special is their instant familiarity to a presumably un-introduced listener. The warmth in which Pecknold writes his characters, be they based on fact or fiction, is so immediately and fondly devoted that you feel as if you’re pouring through a big leather photo album in Grandma’s living room, yellowed by the years, but more vibrant and appealing than ever, rather than listening to a folk song.
The glue here cannot alone be found in the man behind the centered microphone, though. Fleet Foxes is a band, to be sure. The painstakingly picaresque and lush harmonies which crowd their way into most every track on the album will keep your ears in a constant state of Nirvana. Casey Wescott’s adept piano playing keep things from ever really drifting into anything that could be classified as that most dreaded of genre, alt country. The mallet-filled pounding of Nick Peterson behind the drum kit keeps the band from drifting into My Morning Jacket’s more heavy psych which the Foxes have already garnered many a comparison to; a comparison which may be more accurate if referenced to the MMJ of The Tennessee Fire.
It’s been a long time coming, this album. Last June a friend sent me 8 early un-mastered versions of what would ultimately be erased and re-recorded altogether for this record. Those songs have playcounts so unimaginably high in my iTunes that you’d think I’d been listening to them for a decade. So now here we are a year later with a real product in our hands, with a Sub Pop logo on the side nonetheless! You may have also started to hear that Fleet Foxes are totally the next big thing, whatever that means. Pitchfork gave their record a 9.0, their first record, and publications from minuscule to mammoth have lined up to shake their hands, the effects of which would be hard to measure. What I do know is this; if Fleet Foxes are forgotten about by next year, or even next decade, I’ll eat my proverbial hat. To avoid adding to more than half the record already being available on various blogs, I’ve posted one of the mp3’s from our Backstage Session with Robin in March. Enjoy!
Hard to Find a Friend - A Music Blog 
June 9, 2008 at 6:17 pm |
Best review yet.t.
June 10, 2008 at 2:23 am |
You got it right. Nice review.