Fleet Foxes | Fleet Foxes | the Beach Boys of Winter

Fleet Foxes | Fleet Foxes | Songs For Singing

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Fleet Foxes

	Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Sub Pop, 2008 average customer review:based on 89 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

the Beach Boys of Winter

I heard something on WXPN that stirred me from my coffee and newspaper, but all I caught aside from the almost shape note singing was the name Fleet Foxes. Then someone I've been sharing musical knowledge with put in quite a few good words regarding this and Sun Giants. I eventually got around to picking this up at the local independant music store. I played it through a couple times and threw it on the pile. Then I started hearing it in the distance. A soft baroque chiming in the back of my head. Not the Zombies not Procol Harum nor Left Banke. Oddly rootsy. Sad like the last days of Summer. I ended giving it my full attention and played it over and over with special attention to Hymnal.
It was then I realized that they were the Beach Boys of Winter.

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Songs For Singing

I had a bootleg of this album a month before the official release. (Not to worry, I bought the cd here as soon as it came out) It took this long to write a review because it's not an easy album to fully comprehend in the short term. After the nearly perfect and perhaps more accessible debut ep Sun Giant, this full-length cd was far more difficult to warm up to. But just as in life, where nothing worth doing is ever easy, the brilliance of this album becomes more and more obvious over time.

Comparisons to other bands might seem easy, but ultimately are only useful as a guidepost to a type of sound that might interest you as a listener. So sure, if you like any of the 70's (or 00's) bands with a folk/rock/freak sound you may be open to the Foxes. If Led Zep was your main 70's band, you may want to look elsewhere. The Beach Boys may be one band that could be argued to be a significant influence. (As songwriter and front man Robin Pecknold would probably acknowledge.) Yet they sound NOTHING at all like them. Nothing. But the song structures, the harmonies, the lack of glorious guitar solos (which some wrongly refer to as "chops") might owe more to the Beach Boys than CSN&Y, (who many seem to forget were a super group that could rock out with the best of them when they wanted to).

The most striking thing about the Fleet Foxes, what separates them from most other bands out there today, is not what you have heard. It's not the harmonies. It's not the reverb or the beards or Seattle or the massive buzz surrounding them. It's the most basic of all things when it comes to music. The songwriting.

Pecknold, at 21 or 22, has already composed a collection of classics. At least six or seven of the eleven songs on this album are standards to their fans and will be screamed for and sung along with twenty years from now if we are all lucky enough to be around by then. I kid you not... The other songs are nearly as good, making it the most listenable album to come along not just this year, but probably in many, many years.

If you feel like it, you can read my little battle with Hercules_doh in the comments section of his review. Though I feel even more strongly now about the band and the album than at that time, Meadowlarks still stands out as perhaps the only miss between the first two albums. And it's a very near miss at that. It's actually quite beautiful, but the lyrics at one point become a little too affected to be taken seriously. A minor quibble to be sure.

The best thing for fans of indie music is that this band will never be for everyone. As hot as they are right now, there are already haters out there and ears that are just not open to this kind of sound. As beautiful as the songs are, as sweet as the harmonies are and as absent the screeching guitar solos are: do not be fooled. This is serious music that is just different enough to keep it interesting for a lot of fans but will scare away the massive audiences that would probably end up ruining it.

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this is a little miracle of folk era. One misterios cocktail of CSNY and psychedelic blend. An must !!!!!

this is a little miracle of folk era. One misterios cocktail of CSNY and psychedelic blend. An must !!!!!

The best accident ever

I found this on iTunes while browsing My Morning Jacket albums and accidentally pressed "enter" (which played a song sample) instead of pressing "back." Perhaps it's lame of me to admit, but tears welled up in my eyes because I was absolutely overcome. I'd never heard anything like it before, gorgeous, absolutely wonderful songwriting. I bought it immediately and cannot give it any less than five stars. I can NOT believe I'd never heard of them--it's a sin. Truly. Buy this album this minute and prepare to be enlightened like never before!

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Many beautiful moments, but it falters just as often

I'm a huge fan of Midlake. Like that band, FF is exploring 70's harmonies, and analog recording techniques and instruments. As some others have said here, the songs sometimes go on a bit longer than they ought to. Many of the tracks have a fine sense of building drama to them, but the band errs by drawing some of the tracks into an unneeded closing quiet section. And it is not great that sometimes the band is singing off-key -- not often but its noticeable and regretable. Still I REALLY admire the band's musical direction and look forward to hearing a lot more from them. Midlake trumps them in virtually every way but that doesnt mean FF isnt making interesting music.

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