For those of you who may have missed earlier TLOBF ravings about the band (shame on you!), Fleet Foxes are a quite extraordinary and distinctive new addition to the world of alternative blog-rock. This wonderful album showcases the band’s key features in gorgeously sound-drenched fashion.

What is most striking on first listen is how old fashioned, or otherworldly they seem. When, on ‘Blue Ridge Mountains’ they sing of someone who has “missed your connecting flight ” it jars: this is music that seems rooted in an era before air travel. This sense of time and place is achieved partly by the instrumentation: banjos are in liberal use (see: ‘Sun It Rises’, ‘Quiet Houses’, ‘Heard Them Stirring’ – a track punctuated by banjo ‘riffs’); tambourines too, bringing to mind 19th century revivalist prayer meetings (in particular on ‘White Winter Hymnal’); accordions, flutes, acoustic guitar and pianos all contribute to the sound and mood.

Partly, too, there is a distinct focus on themes pastoral and rural. Animals, birds, frozen rivers, rising suns, mountains, woods, hills, morning light, waving tall grasses all feature. Another key theme is that of family – brothers, sisters, mothers and grandfathers are namechecked. This is also a distinctly American take on things – think Little House on the Prairie, or The Waltons (without the saccharine and moral judgements). The lyrics too are often phrased in a way that is reminiscent of folk songs – “Wanderers this morning came by ” from ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant”, for example.

This record is such a deeply satisfying, intense and often extremely moving experience in no small part thanks to the quite beautiful vocals. Singer Robin Pecknold is gifted with a pure, intense and expressive alto, which is served well by the addition of an echoey reverb in the places where he sings alone, such as on the opening to ‘Sun It Rises’, ‘White Winter Hymnal’, and the lovely ‘Ragged Wood’. The best showcase for Pecknold’s voice, though, is ‘He Doesn’t Know Why’, a track which I think offers everything that is wonderful about this band and is, for me, the inspiring and anthemic album highlight. The use of harmonies, too, is consistently judicious, impressive and striking: often coming in wave after wave, each one richer and more lush than the last, as on ‘White Winter Hymnal’.

What else? The band do have a habit of seeming to graft two songs together into one, or perhaps just markedly change the pace, timing and feel of a song half way through. This happens on ‘Ragged Wood’, ‘Quiet Houses’ and ‘He Doesn’t Know Why’, and can be a little disconcerting. I would also perhaps have liked to have been able to get a better sense of what was being sung about, lyrically, beyond the general impressions of mainly bucolic folk-fairy-tales. These, however, are minor gripes and straws being clutched at for the sake of a balanced review… This is a fabulous album - intelligent yet naïve all at once – and one that undoubtedly merits the critical plaudits it will surely receive.
88%

Fleet Foxes is released 2nd June through Bella Union.

Download TLOBF’s Exclusive 10 Track Playlist featuring Fleet Foxes, My Morning Jacket & Lykke Li here.

Links
Fleet Foxes [myspace] [label] [sun giant ep review]