Product Description: 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.
Amazon.co.uk: 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
#1 On My Hit Parade At first I thought the parts stronger than the sum. In other words, each song had elements that were captivating both lyrically and melodically but the songs as a whole didn't seem to work. Then at some point after repeated listens, everything started to bake into the cake it was meant to be. Now I can't get the damn thing of out the CD player and consequently out of my head. The band is a strange mix of all that has come before it, weather it be CSN, Beach Boys, Appalachia, and even some sort of strange nod to 50's white bread harmonies, a la the Fleetwoods. Whatever it is, it is totally captivating. I love having a favorite CD, and this year it will be Fleet Foxes.
Beautiful music but will do little for our struggling economy This is really such a shimmeringly beautiful, almost elegiac, album. But, honestly, in times such as this (specifically, now (for those of you who may be reading this a few years from now)), we need help with our economy any way we can get it. Now, I know music can only do so much (especially since it's just music), but I feel like we need to support the music artists that most help boost our countrie's economic station even if the differences between artists in this regard is very very slight. We need all the help we can get!
Well, Fleet Fox (or is it Foxes? I'm not sure which), as you notice, create very laid back folky music. I feel like this runs the risk of influencing a certain laid backness that our country really can't weather right now. I feel like New Order or someone like daft Punk who use technology in their music and have to take classes to learn their instruments and have to have software and flow charts and such things to do their music are therefore more like to influence a swelling economy.
Fleet F's are on Sub-Pop. This is the label Nirvana(s) started on. Their lead vocalist, Kurt Cobain, killed himself. If you think about it, killing oneself is like committing economic suicide. Sure, you're not spending any more money, but you're not bringing in any either to yourself. That kind of philosophy that Sub-Pop upholds can't be spread through our fragile nation right now. Again, there are other artists like Jay-Z or Usher etc. who aren't on Sub-Pop and not doing that stuff.
They also have a song "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" that someone could get the idea that tigers and peasants... Well, anyway, you get the idea. It's frightening to even think about it, even as unlikely as it is to happen. The fact that it COULD happen is enough to stay away from this album.
But if you really, really can't stay away from this album, do it in such a way that the economy doesn't "know" if that makes any sense.
FYI Modest Mouse is probably statistically about the best (if any music can really be called the best) for this particular sub-prime crash/over-leveraged credit lethal combination our nation's going through right now.
i seriously cant stop listening to it unbelievable. hauntingly beautiful and elegant. Quiet Houses is almost constantly stuck in my head. Buy this album. Don't download it. They DESERVE you're money!
Best Album of 2008 The album bring back memories of the 60's and 70's folk rock. This is the perfect album to buy in vinyl. This is a must have.
"Oliver James washed in the rain no longer." Fleet Foxes' debut full length album is a pleasant, folksy good time. It doesn't really reach the heights that some more intense bands do, but the combination of good acoustic guitar work, alternately catchy and haunting vocal harmonies, and unique song structures make for a record really worth listening too. The hippie-looking Robin Pecknold is probably the band's driving force, writing all the lyrics and taking charge with the vocals, but you get the feeling they just like playing together as a group and working together to create one memorable sound. I had heard that this album was one of the year's best indie releases, and decided to check the video for "White Winter Hymnal" on Youtube. I was a bit surprised by what I was hearing, because it doesn't sound like something from this year at all, but still captivated by it, and I shortly found out that this same thought carried throughout each of the tracks.
From the near prog-like constant shift in pace of "Sun it Rises" to the solitary howling at the end of "Oliver James", every song does something unique while still fitting the band's central feeling. I almost feel like I've heard some of these before, and I'm sure that's partly because it's hard to come up with unique music these days, but that quality of familiarity is part of its appeal to me. It's hard to really describe what makes each song good, because it's never a single hook or element, it's always the sum of the parts. Some favorites are "Ragged Wood", "Quite Houses", "Your Protector", and "Blue Ridge Mountains". It's really one of those albums that has to be listened to as one experience and not a bunch of disparate tracks to throw on your iPod's shuffle. Although "White Winter Hymnal" is still pretty awesome by itself.
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