Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

LP 2, out May 3

I was following the, I was following the, I was following the, ...

http://pitchfork.com/news/41402-fleet-foxes-return-with-new-album-tour/

this album title is parody

that said i dug some songs on the last one

reminds me of the broadcast/focus group cover http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/fleetfoxes_1.jpg

holy 1972

better than the last cover

sounds exactly like their last album.

the new song, I mean.

sort of looking forward to it.

last one really grew on me over time

they're definitely a band that i "like" but that's about it -- saw them at pfork & enjoyed it, i think a few songs are a classic, a friend played the last album when we were chilling by a fire & it worked well (also driving thru tennessee)

you easily could've told me that the new song was a deep cut off the last album but w/e

big ups to sub pop tho in letting me stream this w/o having to give them a fake email address

such a useless band

uselessness blues

fleet the foxers

I am perplexed by this idea of evaluating bands based on their "usefulness"

y'know, like Godsmack is a terrible band but they are useful for motivating our armed forces!

Olivia Newton John is useful for jazzercise

lol

there are plenty of people who use music as a tool. even tool music.

I assume it's standard to hate these guys but I don't mind them. Saying I like them would be quite a stretch though.

they are already kinda dated by their animal name though. and its too late for them to pick a beach name. people should just change group names with every album now. have twitter new name contests. its the 21st century.

beach foxes!

Furry Bastards

very cool cover. it's time for a new album as the last one was pretty addictive.

Lyrics don't make a whole lot of sense

also kind of sounds like an outtake from a Simon and Garfunkel session

Another new song and it's pretty average...

http://onethirtybpm.com/media/listen-fleet-foxes-battery-kinzie/

I loved English House the first time I heard it and every other song since has been disappointing.

five songs in, waiting for a "white winter hymnal." this title track sounds promising. . . .

These guys have 4 awesome beautiful songs (first three off debut album & Mykonos) but beyond that are so powerfully average they may as well be made of bread.

baby im a want you

hmm im loving this.

I downloaded this to see what the fuss was about. Made it half way through the 4th track before 'select all - send to trash'.

It's enjoyable, but nothing really as memorable as the debut or the EP. I keep listening to it tho, cause it's really pretty. Not unlike the Midlake album last year.

these guys sound like wussies

i wonder when folk music became associated with being a wuss- was it just years of lilith fair being the most famous "folk" festival?

it was probably when they started singing like girls

i'd describe Robin Pecknold's voice in a number of ways, some of which aren't favorable, but i would never say that he sounds like a girl. what girl do you know that sounds like him?

such a useless band

― originoo gun kl0pper (k3vin k.), Monday, January 31, 2011 3:38 PM (2 months ago)

Another one of those widely praised bands that for some reason can hardly get a hearing on ILX. I like 'em. Title track is stunning.

idk if i'll actually read the review, but 8.8 bnm:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15363-helplessness-blues/

idk if i'll actually listen to the record

yeah, seconded

fleet foxes only ever make me think of the ways we identify with and construct identity through music. they never make me think of music, even when i'm thinking of something undeniably beautiful, like "white winter hymnal" or "mykonos". i say this because i'm across the divide, on some other team. it has nothing to do with the fundamental quality of their music (whatever that might be) or even its subjective appeal. it's just that the ties that bind bind me to other things, and the distance seems unbridgeable. my loss, right?

right. i'm working through it. i'm never gonna be a fan of comfy-style, beards & tevas 60s/70s revivalism, with music that combines earnest emotionalism with the desire to create a soothing campfire atmosphere. it seems too undemandingly suburban, domestic, and i'm a fucking freak, dammit. but nor am i 100% happy with the oppositional, elitist, punk-derived associations i forged in my youth, associations that seem to demand that i sneer down from on high at this sort of thing.

basically, it sucks to be held prisoner by what you think about the people who supposedly think certain things, by your assumptions about other people's assumptions about culture and meaning. i mean, i like fleetwood mac A FUCK OF A LOT, and even if they're just watered-down latter day pretenders to that kind of radiance, fleet foxes occasionally give me a similar chill. so i've decided to try to like them, as a sort of thought experiment. you know, when i get tired of turning this electric wizard record over and over and over again...

I find them insanely boring, including this new one. Don't get the appeal at all.

i guess i do too. i mean, i got high ideals about broadening my horizons and giving them a fair shot and all, but whenever i try i get bored. right now, i'm listening to the new beastie boys instead, and it's not like i'm proud to say that.

Feel not shame

o but...

Also I love the phrase "insanely boring". So many ways to take that.

"This record is so devoid of interest that, in listening, I felt some measure of sanity slip away." Isn't that like end of The Dark Crystal?

that or shock corridor

I usually love melodic and rather soft pop with a lot of vocal harmonies. Why don't I find Fleet Foxes more than just OK? Maybe they are just a bit too obviously folky for me....

Ugh hate this band. The worst of the "hellllloooooo we're broadcasting from the bottom of a fucking well" bands

Enjoying this new Midlake record...

I actually much prefer Midlake.

I tried to get into this but couldn't. Reminds me of how people used to say NIN was angry for angry's sake. This just seems pretty for pretty's sake. I not going to give up on it yet. Maybe the layers are are just so subtle...

i love it.

me too!

this is unforgivably long, but so be it. first impressions based on NPR stream:

montezuma - nice guitar picking w vocals that evoke a wistful celtic somethingorother without sounding overly indebted to obvious tradition. nice move. sets a place (comfy chair) and time (the past) from which to view whatever might come next. that said, i totally get the "bottom of the well" thing xxxx mentioned upthread. i mean, it's easy to get burned out on lazy reverb abuse, but i like the comfortable, syrupy vibe generated here. not outstanding, but quite pretty.

bedouin dress - 2nd track is more sprightly (a game of inches here), and the expanded instrumentation is nice. some trace of paul simon in the the way dude delivers his "the only regret of my youth" line. same basic summary as the last song: pleasant but hardly distinctive. wonder bread.

sim sala bim - okay, this stands out. dig the eerie, candlelight vibe of the opening verse, then the massive swell of voices on the chorus, then the brutal sharpness of the acoustic guitar. some time spent listening to early yes records, i'm guessing? and so short! kinda wish it went back to the verse & chorus one more time.

battery kinzie - paul simon again, though maybe it's S&G this time, w echoes of "homeward bound" and a similar theme even. this music is quite nice for what it is, but i'm not getting much out of it. i don't want to listen close and "discover" the lyrics - quite the opposite. i sort of wish i felt more strongly about it in some way. i don't love the sound enough to bond with it, but nor do i feel strongly enough about its dullness to condemn the band. it strikes me as good music designed for someone else's ears.

the plains/bitter dancer - floats of vocal tone that drift awhile before breaking out in MASSIVE CSN WORSHIP. such a beautiful thing, and obviously a track that people are gonna be telling friends about, like "hymnal" and "mykonos" off the debut. makes a hard left after a strong opening, but not in a way that derails things. starting to think i might like this record after all...

helplessness blues - okay, the upswing continues. a beautiful, soaring confessional delivered over desperately strummed guitars. lyrics are a bit embarrassing, but i guess that's sort of the point with songs like this, compare to sufjan stevens crying in the van, etc. otoh, find the bit about "if i had an orchard, i'd work till i'm sore" genuinely offensive, in a way that has nothing to do with bad grammar. worshipful faux rural faux naivete pisses me off to no end. doesn't defeat the song though, and honestly, i suspect i'm looking for things to hate.

side note - i do like the fact that fleet foxes don't always rely on simple verse/chorus arrangements. many of their songs instead travel through a series of discrete and complementary movements, in a way that seems organically satisfying without being at all predictable. a strength.

the cascades - a pretty, vaguely baroque (ish) guitar instrumental. good filler, but filler still.

lorelai - really hitting stride now. stretch from "the plains" through "lorelai" kicks ass over what came before. nothing really new here, softly emotive vocals over a pleasantly simmering (mostly) acoustic backdrop, but the anthemic swells and instrumental filligree are working for me as i image the band intended.

someone you'd admire - gah, and we enter the closing stretch. lugubrious and treacly at once, makes me want to stop here. terrible song.

the shrine/an argument - same moody vibe as the last song, but delivered much more effectively. and hey, a moment of actual (seeming) passion in the vocals on the "sunlight over me no matter what i do" line! record could use a bit more of that. aaaaand it's just an intro...i guess? another song reveals itself a couple minutes in, this one much more energetic, recalling fleetwood mac. almost terrifyingly grand. contrary to what i said earlier, i feel this should have been pushed further, with some of the digressions cut away to reveal the the "true song" within. aaaaand another hard left. geez, amazon tells me that this thing is 8 minutes long. some might quibble about whether a free-jazz sax solo was necessary, but 6 or 7 minutes in, that's clearly beside the point. great song, all quibbling aside.

blue spotted tail - gorgeous, spare and simple love song of some kind, van morrisson another influence here, along w paul simon et al. love this. recommended to people who like music.

grown ocean - out with a bang.

huh. turns out i like fleet foxes, maybe even a lot. might get old fast, and i certainly don't want to see them live, but i could happily spin this on a sunny saturday afternoon w friends, beer, food, etc. if that makes me a traitor to punk kind, so be it. i'm getting old anyway, might as well sell out while i can...

xxxx = assholes & airports, obv

In terms of chamber pop, IMO The Guillemots have released a much better 2011 album than Fleet Foxes, although to much less fanfare.

Contenderizer, you don't have to be apologetic for liking an album.

eager to hear this tbh. about 2/3rds of the first album is great.

any band that has someone named Fife Dangerfield i.e: Guillemots, needs to die.

worshipful faux rural faux naivete pisses me off to no end

Well, this. Not just lyrically either: their sound is too pseudo-pastoral for me.

So far I've only heard the title track, which I think sounds fantastic and adds a depth that their songs were lacking the first time around. I liked a lot of the stuff off the debut and the EP, but it sounded pretty without having a lot to latch onto. I'm hoping that "Hopelessness Blues" points the way to an album full of songs to really engage with.

The Jukebox review of the title track.

Predictable that the haters would trot out the tired "hippie" and "beard" cliches. Tbh, I can completely understand why someone might not be into this sort of thing, there is definitely a dangerous level of preciousness in play, but out of hundreds of bands striving for this new faux-pastoral folk thing, I think "Helplessness Blues" is one of the rare examples of it being done really well and in an interesting way.

alfred....glowing. haha.

Predictable that the haters would trot out the tired "hippie" and "beard" cliches

This band asked for it though. But, hey, I understand why a thing of beauty is a joy forever, etc.

I'm just tired of reading about beards in reviews, really.

I'm growing a nice one, by the way!

The only review you need.

RIDICULOUS! haha.

every beard is unique in a unique beard kind of way

http://facialhairstyles.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/beardtypes.jpg

“I was raised up believing I was somehow unique/like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes/unique in each way you can see.” That’s just about the worst first impression a song can make...

- zach lyon

“I’d rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery / Serving something beyond me,”

- quoted by josh love

i didn't mention these awful lines yesterday, but yeah. in describing "helplessness blues", i went very easy on the lyrics - they're more than "a bit embarrassing." but they didn't entirely kill the song for me, at least not on the first pass. i suppose that's because i was evaluating the album as an experimental challenge, trying to overcome my own, knee-jerk aesthetic and social prejudices. as a result, i downplayed my horrors, so long as i could relate to the music on some level. and as music, "helplessness blues" struck me as both beautiful and emotionally powerful ... lyrics aside.

in the long run, i might not be able to bear the dopey lyrics (most of the album is at least a little better in that regard), but i'm listening to the whole thing again and liking it more than i did yesterday. first couple songs are stronger than i thought, while others, like "battery kinzie" - and yeah, "helplessness blues" - shrivel on a second pass. think there are 6 songs i genuinely like on this thing, and a couple filler bits i wouldn't say no to. which leaves only 4 that bore or annoy me. pretty good average.

have to mention a clear influence that hasn't been much discussed: america. does help put fleet foxes' lyrical weakness in perspective.

Album of the year so far. By a mile.

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQARpfke4WdVdetuS-0uOLN4gE0nIjPiwj5_is45N6h8Xis42tRSw&t=1

Predictable that the haters would trot out the tired "hippie" and "beard" cliches. Tbh, I can completely understand why someone might not be into this sort of thing, there is definitely a dangerous level of preciousness in play, but out of hundreds of bands striving for this new faux-pastoral folk thing, I think "Helplessness Blues" is one of the rare examples of it being done really well and in an interesting way.

My problem with Fleet Foxes is definitely not that they are pastoral. Maybe rather that they are not pastoral enough, or pastoral in the wrong way. I dunno. I don't dislike them in any way, tney are perfectly fine and all that. But I feel they are getting too much attention that other (more) pastoral acts with better songs and better vocal harmonies might have deserved instead. Like Guillemots, for instance, to me they are doing partly the same thing much better.

geir ever hear matt pond PA? For chamber pop, its right up your alley.

I'm a few listens in to this album... I don't dislike it but it's not gripping me the way the last one did.

I enjoyed this on first listen but the vocals are a serious problem. I wish they had saved the gloopiest harmonies for special moments - at times it's like they focused more on the vocal chords than on the songs themselves.

That's my problem with them: every song is a special moment apparently.

I don't get the utility of accusing any music of being "faux"

how 'bout "feh"

fleet fauxes

utility is that it's dismissive, therefore useful in the dismissal of that which offends

anyway, this is OTM:

I wish they had saved the gloopiest harmonies for special moments - at times it's like they focused more on the vocal chords than on the songs themselves.

― skip, Thursday, May 5, 2011 9:49 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

That's my problem with them: every song is a special moment apparently.

― ginny thomas and tonic (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 5, 2011 9:50 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

suppose i feel the same way about, say, U2. there is virtue in restraint, in allowing only a little of that vocal/emotional sunshine in, holding it back, letting tension develop. fleet foxes don't do restraint, and it makes them seem "easy" (to use a gross metaphor). otoh, that kind of oversharing has hardly held U2's career back, and though critics don't often appreciate it, a lot of people clearly do.

fwiw, this album gets along very well with certain chemical enhancements.

like a diet soda?

a bottle of sleeping pills and a goodbye note

this is great y'all are crazy

granted I'm only on the first song, haha

so this is basically a Simon & Garfunkel record

And you must worship it or be destroyed, apparently.

hello inertia my old friend

warm... and mandatory

lol

Paul Simon's new album >>>>> this thing

I liked the bit of the stream I heard of the new Paul Simon thing - obviously he's moved on from this folk-pop strummery harmony-laden stuff lol

but really the dual-melody harmonies on this are VERY S&G, seems like the most obvious reference point to me

hmm, some much more abrupt/discordant moments on here compared to the last one

kind of boring.

I loved the last one - loved the last one. The new album is good but somehow "good" feels disappointing.

Largely the same feeling with their first and second^. It's like listening to a group of classically trained celloists... I mean, fuck, I'm impressed and all. They're doing everything perfectly. But it's a snooze.

nothing worse than a bunch of classically trained cellists

this is great. seems to me the only misstep is some of the gypsy fiddling stuff

^^^ I really like this album.

If competent vocal harmonies were still a rock norm nobody would give a fuck about these beardos.

But then Pitchfork always creams itself over half-assed, reverb-drenched Beach Boys rips

this doesn't really sound like any Beach Boys record

harmonies /= Beach Boys

Yeah, this is a lot closer to CSNY than anything Beach Boys. I mean, its easy enough to understand why people would dislike this type of thing, so theres not need to just make up nonsensical dismissals.

I said Simon & Garfunkel upthread but yeah CSNY is also appropriate

Grateful Dead, too.

nah the Foxes can actually sing

seriously one of the things I cannot get past with the dead is how shitty their vocals and vocal melodies are. drives me up the wall.

Foxes are "better" singers, I'll grant you that.

There are some pretty nice harmonies on Workingman's Dead though.

CSN(Y) is right on the money I think

this Father John Misty album is really good btw

it is much funnier than anything FF has ever done, that's for sure

I'm not so much into the Father John Misty stuff, but I love Poor Moon.

feel like "Only Son of the Ladies Man" = perfect sequel to Leonard Cohen's "Death of A Ladies Man"

really? no one else likes this? just me?

humph

they played track yesterday on the cbc and i really liked it - just haven't had a chance to check out more.
i was surprised how much it made me laugh!

Witting A Novel - such an amazing song!

yeah def a highlight. the neil line is hilar

wtf his show at the Independent sold out in less than an hour!

I hate the internet.

i've tried to go back to crack-up and i just can't dig it. it feels so. . . forced and purposely obtuse. it's certainly pleasant-sounding, but there's not much beyond that.

helplessness blues otoh —and i said this at the time— is monumental. songs like 'sim sala bim', 'the plains / bitter dancer', and especially 'grown ocean' are stunningly transcendent. they use traditional sounds in terms of instruments, but the structure and arrangements is like late 60s david axelrod meets. . . i don't even know what. it's one of the most gorgeous pieces of music i've ever heard. csny if they were obsessed with stanislaw lem and debussy. i have no idea how much of the album's lyrics are autobiographic, but even if they aren't, he sings everything as if he's seen it all and is the most content and wisest world-weary narrator.

a very rare thing, indeed.

Crack-up does seem like a very deliberately constructed misstep, like they set out to make an album that confounds expectations, upends standard song structure, deviates considerably from their prior releases - and it does do all of that. The problem is none of those things succeed in making the album interesting, it's nigh unlistenable in its aimless dodging and zig-zagging from one idea to another.

it's nigh unlistenable

see, i would disagree on this. crack-up is so carefully considered in every aspect that it's actually very easy to just put on and play all the way through. but if you really actively listen; well, that's where it falls short. it feels like a fireworks display after the home team has lost — nice to look at, but what's the purpose?

Can’t say much about the whole album but “If You Need To, Keep Time on Me” is beautiful