84 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
'The sound of ancient voices ringing soft upon your ear'
In a recent interview Robin Peknold, lead singer and songwriter of Fleet Foxes said 'Four people singing is just as close as you can get musically, because you're all standing next to each other and you're all just an interval away. It just reminds me of family.' With these close harmonies Fleet Foxes made quite an impression at the South By Southwest Festival combining...
29 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
Not quite Fleet enough
Perfectly nice, perfectly pretty and certainly musically accomplished, the Fleet Foxes sound like...well, it's already been said, but certainly my first impression was the Beach Boys singing the back catalogue of Crosby Stills & Nash, with an annoying overlay of reverb. Unfortunately, they also lack any originality, soul or passion, and after a while (and I've listened...
In a recent interview Robin Peknold, lead singer and songwriter of Fleet Foxes said 'Four people singing is just as close as you can get musically, because you're all standing next to each other and you're all just an interval away. It just reminds me of family.' With these close harmonies Fleet Foxes made quite an impression at the South By Southwest Festival combining choral singing with folk, gospel, rock and pop to awesome effect. And after the glorious Sun Giant EP the sun has risen again on the debut album from the Seattle quintet.
Opener Sun It Rises begins with a bluesy sounding acapella before an acoustic guitar brings in a far more West Coast sound. A lovely beginning. White Winter Hymnal is an amazing track, the opening line repeated like a round as more voices join in to layer the harmonies on top of one another. The track builds before breaking down to just the voices again at the end. Simple but brilliant. Frequent references to the landscape and wildlife give the album a pastoral folksy feel typified by tracks like Meadowlarks and Blue Ridge Mountains. Ragged Wood has that country feel before quietening and allowing the voices to take control, making it two tracks in one really. Robin Peknold sings alone on Tiger Mountain Peasant Song to great effect, sounding like an ancient balladeer; the music both classical and contemporary. He Doesn't Know Why is a great pop song. Your Protector sounds like it could come from Civil War era America and with its flutes reminded me for some reason of Simon and Garfunkel. The album finishes with Oliver James, which tells the sad tale of a drowning. ' On the kitchen table that your grandfather did make/You in your delicate way will slowly clean his face/And you will remember when you rehearsed the actions of/An innocent and anxious mother full of anxious love'. Beautiful.
The album is strong, undeniably beautiful and will make a great soundtrack for quiet summer evenings. To steal a line of Peknold's this is 'The sound of ancient voices ringing soft upon your ear'.
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Poor Fleet Foxes, roundly dismissed by a leading UK indie magazine (which shall remain nameless) as "hippies who sing acapella". To which the obvious response is: what's wrong with that? They do it well - very well. Sun Giant, their debut EP, was quite an attention-grabber, and its promise is amply fulfilled by this almost uniformly excellent first album. Suitably, it opens with a Southern church-style acappella burst, oddly propounding a parody of weather lore: "Red squirrel in the morning/red squirrel in the evening." And then, with great assurance, it simply lifts off and coasts seamlessly. Comparisons with (UK-only) label mates Midlake are inevitable, given the shared massed vocal harmonies, acoustic folk influences and weird rural narratives in the lyrics, but really Fleet Foxes are a more accessible proposition: Robin Pecknold's writing packs this record full of grand pop hooks. The reverb is not only in-your-face but utterly spot-on; this is what the Walker Brothers might have sounded like if they'd had access to more modern studio technology, and what an additional joy it is to hear a modern record that is neither ridiculously compressed nor overlong (it lasts just over 39 minutes). Such is the quality that it's impossible to single out highlights; easier instead to identity just a couple of tracks which are slightly below par, including the closing vocals-and-guitar-only Oliver James, this take of which sounds it's trying a little too hard. A better farewell, likewise featuring just Pecknold and guitar, would have been the dazzling Isles, on the bonus CD that comes with certain editions of the album. But otherwise Fleet Foxes' debut is a sheer delight. The band say they've been working at their music for a long time, but as Peely used to say of the Smiths, Fleet Foxes seem to have sprung fully formed from the womb, and this album is all the proof that's needed.
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The sticker on the front of this special version of Fleet Foxes debut album says that it now contains all Fleet Foxes songs yet recorded - but it doesn't! CD one contains the first album with no bonus tracks and CD two contains the Sun Giant ep with no bonus tracks - there is no sign of the Fleet Foxes eponymous self-released demo ep from 2006.
The missing tracks are
1. "She Got Dressed"
2. "In the Hot, Hot Rays"
3. "Anyone Who's Anyone"
4. "Textbook Love"
5. "So Long to the Headstrong"
6. "Icicle Tusk"
Anyone expecting to find these tracks here will be disappointed; it would have been nice to have had them added as bonus tracks.
However, that is a minor quibble and what you do get is superb timeless music with many influences - but still able to sound fresh and original. Robin Pecknold and Skyler Skjelset are the main members influencing the band's sound and direction and both are still relatively young - their musical maturity reflecting the diversity of their parent's musical taste. I didn't think I would ever hear another contemporary version of False Knight on the Road, a classic from the Martin Carthy era Steeleye Span (Child Ballad No 3), but Fleet Foxes tackle it and make it their own.
That's just one example of their varied influences; if someone had played me the album and told me it was a lost sixties classic I could easily have believed it. And yet it still manages to sound fresh and relevant to today; a rare achievement. It is classic American music that will stand the test of time - I just hope the follow-up, due later this year, can live up to the expectation. If you have enjoyed BBC4's recent season of Folk America programmes you will love the music here too.
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My first reaction having listened to the first few tracks on this CD was to pretend I'd never bought it in the first place. Why? Well, a) I hate wasting money on music (particularly nowadays) and b) the CD is, well, how do you put it, a little sort of 'soft' (as in girly prancing through a field of daisies soft). But I stuck with it, listened through (having securely wound up the car window to avoid embarrassing aural seepage), then listened again. And guess what? I loft soft! But soft in this case means tunes, craft and melodies to humm, all day, every day. To hell with gritty miserableness and hello to the new summer of love!
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I bought this on a whim having heard a track on the radio. At first I was a little unsure, but the more I played the CD the more the tracks began to flow over me like a stream on a summers day. And that's the kind of images that this beautiful album helps conjure up. Haunting melodies, simple instruments, nothing technical, just folk-inspired harmonies put together by a clearly talented band. Fleet Foxes have been compared to the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan and whilst I can see the similarities, this band is in a league of its own. I am so pleased I got this 2CD special edition because it allowed me to listen to their Sun Giant EP and I must confess the standout track for me has to be Mykonos. An instant classic.
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Like many other British reviewers, I suspect, I stumbled on this 'alternative folk' album by accident when listening to the audio channel on a longhaul BA flight. It was twinned with a Dennis Wilson (ex-Beach Boy) album which was a mistake as their sounds were so familiar (West Coast hippy harmonies) that initially I could not tell when one album finished and the other started. Note that Amazon claim that lots of customers are buying both albums together! But as I listened to the channel over and over again (it was a long flight) the Fleet Foxes half began to stand out and indeed to imprint itself on my subconscious. I bought the album as soon as I got back and have barely stopped listening since. It is a magical and addictive album that combines the pastoral (meadowlarks, tall grasses etc) with the ethereal (the other-worldly arrangements and soaring harmonies) and the sombre ("Staggering through premonitions of my death").
Some reviewers have criticised the first track (Sun It Rises) as out of character with the rest but I think this is one of those rare albums when there is not one weak track. In fact, I cannot pick a favourite as they are all, in their own way, haunting and beautiful. Other reviewers have been been unimpressed by the tuning, arguing that in places the harmonies go awry. I have a good ear for these things and do not believe that one note is out of place on the album (but live might be different - see below). Yes, there is a rawness in the singing (especially Robin Pecknold's solo singing on "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" which, if pressed, I would probably offer as my favourite track), but this is part of the Fleet Foxes' rustic hippy charm.
I note that Fleet Foxes are touring the UK later this autumn and that the London dates are already sold out. There are still some tickets for gigs in the provinces, so get these while you can (I have). But I hope their live performances do not disappoint; the live performances which you can find on Youtube look quite weak and vocally strained.
No album is perfect of course and my two minor criticisms of this album are (a) the diction is poor in places (I defy anyone to listen to 'Quiet Houses' and interpret the second chorus line as 'Don't give in' - it sound to me like 'darkie man'!) and (b) no lyrics are supplied with the CD. But these are minor quibbles. This is a brilliant album.
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I felt the need to write and add my support to the majority of reviews for this album. God this is good, sometimes an album just comes along and knocks you off your feet and you think what was that. This IS one of those albums, and I mean album, because you have to listen to this as a complete entity and just get washed away in all the different emotions that it conjours up. As near a perfect album as i've ever heard. Just put it on the stereo, lie back and dream.
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I truly love these songs and the baroque-pop ambition of this band, but less so some aspects of performance and production. The much-commented harmonies are mostly good, but Ihave my doubts about the pitching on a few (i.e. Heard Them Stirring), and if you're going to do this style, they need to be spot on. Don't they have software for this? Turning down the reverb would have helped this generally crude production. (e. g. the otherwise beautiful Meadowlarks). So sadly my favourite CD so far this year is marred by a poor production and that's what keeps it from 5 stars.
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Perfectly nice, perfectly pretty and certainly musically accomplished, the Fleet Foxes sound like...well, it's already been said, but certainly my first impression was the Beach Boys singing the back catalogue of Crosby Stills & Nash, with an annoying overlay of reverb. Unfortunately, they also lack any originality, soul or passion, and after a while (and I've listened to this album many, many times) the bucolic whittering and twee lyrics become somewhat dull, and sometimes even cringeworthy. For this to be hailed as "unique" or "a breath of fresh air" when it is patently neither is astonishing, while one newspaper has referred to it a "landmark", which implies the musical version of a "slow news day". It's sweet, derivative and actually quite forgettable.
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I love my 'freak folk', my Newsoms, my Oldhams et al. I love close multi-part harmonies, and I love Sub-Pop records. Even so, I had my misgivings about picking this album up, having heard a couple of tracks which, while they sounded ok, did not exactly have me raving. However, I found a cheap vinyl copy and duly bought it.
Next time I'll listen to my gut. What is so surprising about this album is just how remarkably dull and lifeless it is. The frothing reviewers, virtually in raptures describing the 'incredible' and 'otherworldly' harmonies, have clearly never heard a Zombies, CSNY or Beach Boys record before, because there is literally nothing here that you haven't heard before and in a more lively and characterful form on a record by one of the aformentioned bands. I was hoping that Fleet Foxes would incorporate the harmonies into something both unique and new, but most of this album is really working at the level of pastiche or nostalgia, always an uninspiring approach for a debut. On top of that (and something of a clincher for me) the production is awful, as flat as a pancake with no texture in the harmonies, which are often buried under shonky sounding reverb. Cheesy instrumentation and, to be honest, uninteresting lyric writing of the 'hello birds, hello sky' variety leave this one in the dust. You want a properly weird, folk/country tinged, freak-folk oddity? Buy Mayo Thompson's 'Corky's Debt To His Father'. It has barely left my turntable for 6 months, and I have never heard anything like it, a soubriquet I sadly cannot apply to Fleet Foxes. Damn Shame.
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