Send "Fleet Foxes " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Fleet Foxes' unpretentious, crowd-pleasing directness was the key to their rapid rise. Their Sun Giant EP and self-titled debut LP, both released in 2008, brimmed with inviting melodies, evocative lyrics, and open-armed harmonizing that seemed designed to reach a wide variety of listeners. Their bright folk-rock sound wasn't exactly "cool," but that was sort of the point-- it's familiar in the most pleasing way, lacking conceit or affectation. Their expression of their love for music (and making music) was refreshing three years ago, and that sort of thing never gets old.But clouds inevitably roll in. On the band's follow-up, Helplessness Blues, the mood is darker and more uncertain, adding shade to their gold-hued sound. The change in tone reflects the tumultuous road Fleet Foxes traveled during the album's creation. In late 2009, Fleet Foxes had an album's worth of songs ready, but the tracks were mostly scrapped before mixing. The arduous creative process took a toll on the group members, particularly singer/songwriter Robin Pecknold, who told Pitchfork at the time, "The last year has been a really trying creative process where I've not been knowing what to write or how to write." The group's persistence paid off, though: Helplessness Blues is comparatively deeper, more intricate, and more complex, a triumphant follow-up to a blockbuster debut. Working again with producer Phil Ek, they've crafted a cavernous record that allows more room for them to breathe and stretch. The album's longer, episodic cuts contain disquieting shifts in tone. "The Plains/Bitter Dancer", for example, begins as a spindly, psychedelic folk tune reminiscent of some of the Zombies' more introspective moments, and then, after a brief pause, bursts suddenly into the type of gangland chorus Fleet Foxes have practically trademarked by now. Elsewhere, shorter songs seem to end mid-thought; the rollicking tumble of "Battery Kinzie" cuts off suddenly, while "Sim Sala Bim"'s heavy-strummed raga quickly unfurls like broken strings. This battle between tension and serenity is new to the band's repertoire, and it lends the album a compelling uneasiness that starkly contrasts the sunnier disposition of their first two releases....full text |
| Culturebully |
| “I have such a weird relationship with this record,” confessed Fleet Foxes‘ Robin Pecknold in an interview with Stereogum this past February. “The process of making it really took over my life and started affecting my relationships, which in turn affected the record.” Yet while the band’s new album Helplessness Blues is recognizable as a testimony to this personal struggle, it also represents a test for the group as a whole. Faced with the potentially crippling reality that they have created an outrageously high standard for themselves, the band was confronted with a new challenge: Could they create music true to their vision while avoiding disappointing the legions of fans they’ve attracted along the way? The immediate answer was no; or at least not at first. Fleet Foxes logged plenty of hours in the recording studio in 2009 while working on what would become Helplessness Blues; so many that a 2010 release was a near certainty. But after wrapping on the recording the band re-approached the new music with open ears and decided that it didn’t reflect their vision. Speaking to Uncut magazine, Pecknold recently revealed that he “felt there were things that could be improved.” So they “improved” them; re-recording many of the songs and pushing the album’s pending release date off into the distance. Now in its final form, Helplessness Blues doesn’t sound entirely all that different from the music that the band has released before it. The LP opens with the energetic alternating picking of “Montezuma,” relying on attractive vocal harmonies that have remained a staple throughout Fleet Foxes’ entire catalog. “The Cascades” flows by as a succinct instrumental. “Someone You’d Admire” loses itself in the combination of Pecknold’s gentle croon and a hollow-sounding acoustic. “Blue Spotted Tail” focuses similarly on cautious picking before bleeding into the rumbling conclusion of “Grown Ocean.” Really, for the most part, it could be argued that little has changed here: Fleet Foxes still work within the gray area of folk-pop, not really pushing any boundaries through the creation of their songs. Yet, despite such basic similarities, Helplessness Blues is constructed with a different purpose than 2008′s Fleet Foxes. Relatives of “Mykonos” and “White Winter Hymnal” are nowhere to be found, but are instead replaced by a number of rich tracks which further reveal the level of craftsmanship employed by the group....full text |
| Rollingstone |
| The beauty is skin-deep on the second album by the Pacific Northwest band Fleet Foxes. With its gleaming acoustic guitars, acid-folk brush strokes (harmonium, hammered dulcimer) and warming choral harmonies, Helplessness Blues is vocalist-songwriter Robin Pecknold's dazzling evocation of early-Seventies rock Eden: the Sunflower-era Beach Boys and the spaced-cowboy romance of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, dosed with the Indo-Celtic exotica of the Incredible String Band. Fleet Foxes Get Existential on Second Album, 'Helplessness Blues' Underneath, you find trouble-songs loaded with blown chances, battered ideals and impending mortality. "I wonder if I'll see/Any faces above me/Or just cracks in the ceiling," Pecknold sings in "Montezuma," imagining his deathbed. He does it in a chirpy, disarming voice, like a young Graham Nash. Yet there is a fighter's spirit in there and in the period-perfect glow of the music: a stubborn faith in the peace and healing embodied by records like Déjá Vu. "If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw . . . and you would wait tables and soon run the store," he sings in the gorgeously appointed title song. It's like Nash's "Our House," rewritten for an age of reduced expectation but rendered with a true seeker's gusto. Too young to have experienced the era he holds so dear, Pecknold has found refuge and inspiration in the echoes....full text |
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