THE ALBUM CLUB:Is it second time lucky for Fleet Foxes, asks DARAGH DOWNES
HOW MANY STUDIO engineers does it take to change a lightbulb for Robin Pecknold? No need, man – “sunlight over me no matter what I do”.
It’s all too easy to take the Mícheál out of the studied pastoralism of Fleet Foxes and their frontman. Any twentysomething Seattleite who can unblushingly tell you he went down among the dust and pollen to the old stone fountain in the morning after dawn is asking for trouble. But is this whole rustic authenticity thing little more than a contrived schtick aimed at the key Alienated Suburbanite demographic?
Our June Album Clubbers, not being cynics, don't buy this charge. Seasoned musicians themselves, they know just how much tender loving craft goes into putting together the band's signature Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies and lush acoustic textures. However, each of our Popicals has come away from Helplessness Bluestroubled by what they see as an ongoing lack of depth, originality and risk.
SNOWFLAKE LYRICS ARE NOT UNIQUE
Ruan van Vliet is first in, damning the album with faint praise. “It’s pretty and it’s very well made. It’s hard to hate but hard to love as well. It’s just sort of a blurry, folky, brown . . . thing! I can’t find any shape to it. Every time I listen to it it’s just this dense fog of blandness. When I heard the first album I didn’t really dig it too much. And that didn’t really change with this second album. I think it’s just more of the same, probably even more dull in fact.”
He finds the album "unbearably twee in places". The much commented upon moment in The Shrine/An Argumentwhere Pecknold "kind of shouts" the "Sunlight over me" line mildly excited him, but the very next line's lapse into almost medieval tweeness ("apples in the summer are golden sweet") left him aghast. As did the preciousness of the title track's opening lyric: "I was raised up believing I was somehow unique/ Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see."
“I nearly threw up,” van Vliet tells us.
But is it fair to criticise lyrics in isolation from the music? Padraig Cooney argues that it is: “That snowflake lyric is very unimaginative. It’s perfectly okay to have lyrics in a song that are not worth reading on paper, that totally make sense in the context of listening to the song. But Fleet Foxes have given us a lyric sheet. They obviously think their lyrics are worth reading as written down like poetry, and that baffles me.”
‘GROWERS’ FAIL TO FLOWER
When Fleet Foxes first came on to Cooney's own radar a couple of years back, he found them "nicely old-fashioned. It was unusual at the time, briefly." But he came away from one of their Vicar Street shows less than enthralled. "I didn't think it was great. Generally my opinion of the band is that it's just a showcase for the guy's lovely voice. I don't think they have a lot of songs that really hit home when you listen to them over a longer time. And I think this second album has less tunes than the first." While "instantly melodic" numbers such as Lorelaiand Battery Kinziehave grown on him somewhat, he's been disappointed by the lack of depth in the other, less immediate tracks. "I don't think that their 'growers' grow that well."
The cultural nostalgia behind the band’s huge appeal bemuses him. “Their music is a very fully formed pastiche. I think that among younger people there’s definitely a personality type who is kind of envious of some supposed age before there were flashing neon lights everywhere and the internet. And they see these guys and they go, ’Oh wow these guys get it, they get what I like.’ ”
Mike Stevens has nothing in principle against full-blown retromania, but makes the case that it can only work if it has genuine character of its own. “Fleet Foxes are really good at artifice. They create this idea that they have great depth, and then once you kind of dig past the artifice, there’s no real substance there. It’s the image, the beards. It’s the name Fleet Foxes, it makes you think of Olde Worlde folky images. I also find myself kind of being duped by the music because I’m a sucker for big-sounding beautiful pop sounds.”
Stevens wishes the band would ease up on their multi-layer vocal harmonies. “They pile on loads of reverb and it’s almost like, okay we know you can do that, that’s a nice trick in the studio, but it’s been done and done and done. There’s only so much of it that you can take before you get bored.”
On first listen he was tempted to dismiss the entire album as "just a mush of Fleet Foxness". But tracks such as Bedouin Dressand Lorelaihave grown on him. If only he could get past the annoying lyrical archaisms and the lack of original musical vision. "It's nice, a nice amalgamation of loads of different things that have been done before."
BEAUTIFUL MUSIC, WELL MADE
Of our four guests, Padraig O'Reilly is the most laudatory of the album. "First time I listened to it I expected to not like it much. 'Ah, Fleet Foxes, okay, I'll listen to it.' And then Montezumacame on and I thought, well actually this is really beautiful music, it's really lush, really well arranged, the singing's lovely. And you have to admire their focus as well. It's just that singular focus on the type of music they want to do. It's very impressive and it's not easy to do. Because of course they're of a certain age and they grew up in a certain part of the world where they've heard other music – one of them was in a screamo band for God's sake!"
O’Reilly does however agree with his fellow Popicals that the band are let down badly by their insipid frontman. “I always want to hear something that’s filtered through somebody’s own personality or experience. And the filter seems to be kind of missing here. It’s just references laid a bit bare. I don’t feel like I know anything about him and what he thinks.” If Pecknold had even a hint of the idiosyncrasy of a Van Morrison, a Tom Waits or a Joanna Newsom, this could be a great band. “But he doesn’t communicate anything about himself – even if it was only a fake personality!”
With special thanks to Tower Records, Wicklow Street, Dublin 2
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