Album review: Fleet Foxes, 'Helplessness Blues'
3.5 stars (out of 4)
The plaintive harmonies and get-back-to-the-country imagery of Fleet Foxes’ well-received 2008 self-titled debut helped define a musical movement of 21st Century bands in search of lost, 19th Century ideals: Midlake, Blitzen Trapper, Bon Iver. Now the Seattle sextet returns with the far more ambitious “Helplessness Blues” (Sub Pop).
Though the melodies aren’t quite as instantly memorable, the album is in many ways superior to its predecessor. The band’s multi-part harmonies function more as a piece of the wide-screen arrangements rather than the dominant feature. The voice of Robin Pecknold is more out front and lyrically direct; against an intricate web of counterpoint melodies, he plays the troubled narrator wrestling with his place in the world. Employing everything from woodwinds to Tibetan singing bowls, with finger-picked acoustic guitars sailing atop rumbling timpani, the band makes a wonderful sound: rich but not overstuffed, intricate but not labored, virtuosic without sounding like anyone’s showing off. The songs don’t stick to verse-chorus formula, they’re more like mini-suites that turn and twist without drawing attention to their complexity.
If there’s a shortcoming, it’s that the band is almost too subtle for its own good; all that beauty and detail is rarely played for dramatic effect. When Pecknold’s pristine voice rises and finally cracks on “The Shrine/An Argument,” followed by a free-jazz freak-out, it’s the type of musical jolt the rest of the album lacks.
But such outbursts probably wouldn’t make sense in fleshing out the album’s central theme. “Could I wash my hands of just looking out for me?” Pecknold sings on “Montezuma.” On the title song, he declares his desire to “be a functioning cog in some great machinery, serving something beyond me.”
In striving for more self-less version of self, Pecknold and his excellent band have made an album that embraces modesty. Which is why it may take a few listens for its rarefied combination of beauty and anxiety to hit home. In this case, another virtue that Pecknold extols -- patience – has its rewards.
greg@gregkot.com