So, Fleet Foxes...

So is the basic complaint in music aficiando/critic circles about Fleet Foxes topping the End Of Year charts not so much the dislike of the music but that the music doesn't RAWK, doesn't have a captivating backstory, and/or isn't original enough?

I heard them in starbucks earlier. Buncha starbucks yuppies.

sounds like a dude with a nice voice and average musical talent listened to a lot of yellow house. maybe that's just me though (it's not)

my main complainzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

This is basically like if music critics as a unit decided the Shins were the freshest and most exciting thing going on in the world of sound instead of placing them at #14 or whatever.

So is the basic complaint in music aficiando/critic circles about Fleet Foxes topping the End Of Year charts not so much the dislike of the music but that the music doesn't RAWK, doesn't have a captivating backstory, and/or isn't original enough?

What I keep reading (and happen to agree with) is basically that they have a great sound but kind of weak songs—nothing really to do with rocking or backstories or originality at all.

that's it pretty much exactly. the album sounds amazing, and obviously their harmonies are right there. but the songs are really not that good. I wouldn't be surprised if I end up liking them more down the road, but usually when a group is this lauded the people who liked them initially cool on them--doesn't have the same spark as the initial stuff, or whatever the argument is.

I also find them pretty saccharine, to be honest.

I guess I've already ended up "down the road" then, because I really like this album now. It just went over my head not even six months ago. Granted, a turning point was seeing them live at SP20. I was nonplussed with the album, but the live show was excellent.

haha well I'm not guaranteeing I'll ever like them down the road, either. like I say, I think they're cloying. ("Oliver James"--ugh.)

better than "Jamie Oliver"

good album

and cloying in a way that I find worse because it's pretty obviously heartfelt. the turnaround line in "White Winter Hymnal"--"And there you go!"--is a good example: it's a cliche, it says zip, they might as well be singing "Everything is everything, brah!"

you mean like dance music lyrics?

*hides from flung knife*

No, not like dance-music lyrics, because dance-music lyrics don't tend to announce themselves as, you know, profound.

Of course they do! The fact that the most famous ones are sampled again and again is testament to that!

The major point i didn't make is that Fleet Foxes aren't exactly a dance group, lol

Actually, that's wrong--sometimes they do, esp. with the stuff that's more cosmic-minded or whatever. (I was thinking about that when I typed the last response but figured I'd leave it alone until someone else brought it up. Didn't take long at all.)

xpost

Well, this point may become important if Fleet Foxes sign to Nocturnal Groove for the sophomore album, but in the meantime

Oh, better you than some dickhead who's still mad at me because I didn't memorize half the Guided by Voices catalog instead of actually enjoying myself during the '90s.

"there you go" could likely mean seeing someone departing rather than "it is what it is"-type meaningless bullshit

Here's the lyric, cribbed from some website:

"I was following the pack
all swallowed in their coats
with scarves of red tied 'round their throats
to keep their little heads
from fallin' in the snow
And I turned 'round and there you go
And, Michael, you would fall
and turn the white snow red as strawberries
in the summertime"

So the line is closer to what passion bucket suggests than what I did--fair enough. I heard it as a pivot line--the perspective changes with it, which I heard it as, just not that specifically. I still don't care for the song or the line, but yeah, I'll cede that point.

"what I heard it as" = a pivot line, not necessarily the sort of pivot line I'd thought of it as, mainly because that line jumps out and sticks in my memory in a way the others don't.

i think nabisco was riding for that verse on the vampire weekend thread

great imagery

haha, well I apologize for belaboring it if it's already been widely discussed here. I don't read anywhere near all the threads around here (and haven't in a long time).

nah not getting on u--just saying that seems to be the verse that everyone picks out, whether its as an example of their hidden lyrical talents or as an example of how poor they are as lyricists

I'm petitioning my local MP to revise the laws on Fleet Foxhunting.

I guess I've already ended up "down the road" then, because I really like this album now. It just went over my head not even six months ago. Granted, a turning point was seeing them live at SP20. I was nonplussed with the album, but the live show was excellent.

Yeah, me too basically. Seeing them live has cast the album in a different light, partly because I've been furnished with a sense of personality which I hadn't quite grasped before. They really are a superb live act - and there's some added intensity and muscularity on stage which mitigates against the soppiness.

I was in the "sounds nice, no songs" camp (I think I said so upthread?), but having the album forced into my ears quite a bit recently I'm beginning to see that there are in fact a few songs in there. At least two! If the whole album's going to grow on me it's really taking its time, though.

the album sounds amazing, and obviously their harmonies are right there. but the songs are really not that good.

I'd take issue with that. At the very least, "White Winter Hymnal", "He Doesn't Know Why" and "Your Protector" I think are very fine purely as songs and melodies. Their entire sound seems to be based on "The Only Living Boy In New York" by Simon and Garfunkel and the singer's voice is quite Lee Maversy.

Wait, that was a Vampire Weekend thread where I was talking about that song? No way. But yeah, I think that lyric is really well-assembled, with loads of craft packed into something that short and simple -- the sounds and internal rhymes, the color scheme, the appearance of the "you" in that turnaround, the way specific things land on specific musical changes, etc. (Even the fact that it starts with that repeating "I was following the," which sounds like some kind of fake-mystical "I was following the eye" until it hops out of the loop and continues into something concrete!)

I dunno, I believe they have three songs that have really stuck with me as great, solid songs; the rest seems, you know, good.

Wait, no, it was on this thread:

New bohemianism: beards, pickling beets, Fleet Foxes, rye...

dude we already went over how there aren't any internal rhymes in that verse

Ok, Shakey, when the words "follow" and "swallow" die, you can show up at their funerals and tell them they didn't rhyme

Sorry n you go to bat for "indie" bands in so many threads I can't keep track. I like that verse though and I like this band a fair amount they are nice to listen to in the winter.

I mean, I don't care if you want to call that part of the rhyme scheme or if you just don't like the verse or whatever, it's remarkably unimportant, but I will be baffled by anyone who denies that there is not some attention to how words feel in the mouth involved in:

- scARRves of RRRed tied RRound their thRRoats

or can't follow what's going on with the S, R, and T sounds in this:

- snow red as strawberries in the summertime

xpost - Max I post to like 2 ILM threads a month, you have me confused with someone else

Ha, pardon me "I will be baffled by anyone who denies that there IS some attention etc."

i was sort of joking since ur two ilm threads were the fleet foxes thread and the vampire weekend thread.....................................

that's called alliteration nabisco.

internal rhyming = following/followed, red/heads, fallin'/fall (leaning heavy on that one), go/snow (2nd iteration, that one too).

um, rhymes that fall at the end of a phrase (go/snow, etc.) are by definition not internal...? The "following/swallowed" one is the only internal rhyme and even that's kinda stretching it since its just the first two syllables in each word that rhyme.

I dunno why I'm even arguing about this, I've never even heard this song I just find the lyrics stupid written down.

I don't like the song, the lyrics or the band, either. But you're pushing way too hard on a narrow, overly limited definition of what internal rhyming is, or can be. Snow/go in the 5th and 6th lines is traditional end rhyming. The repetition of "snow" in the 8th line is internal rhyming that picks up on it. As if any of this matters...

hahaha yeah I'll let it go

lets go back to talking about AC/DC

I don't really agree with the sound vs. songs distinction - I think that the songs are interesting (sometimes interesting for how they meander and fall apart, but still interesting) as much as the sound. Though perhaps when it comes to the lyrics, I would agree with a sound vs. sense distinction. As Nabisco rightly points out, there is a lot of craft going into how the lyrics sound (rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, etc.), though the sense of the words sometimes verges on the hippy-dippy. That doesn't bother me too much though.

Shakey am I tripping or did you seriously just try to tell me that swallowing/followed is better categorized as alliteration?!?!?!

- scARRves of RRRed tied RRound their thRRoats

or can't follow what's going on with the S, R, and T sounds in this:

- snow red as strawberries in the summertime

no I was referring to ^^^this, which is alliteration

I love Blue Ridge Mountains. But then again I love all songs that remind me of "Billie Jean."

nabisco otm about white winter hymnal

Oh, yes, that is alliteration. Not sure why you felt a need to point that out to me, but yes, that is true.

If you really wrap your mouth around it, there's also something nice going on with the sequence of vowel sounds, too, which kind of open up gradually -- ah (scarves), eh (red), ie (tied), ow (round), oh (throats), mostly with the Rs dropping between them.

I think this writing is kind of an, umm, outlier in terms of Fleet Foxes lyrics, though, because as soon as I noticed it I actually started googling around to double-check that they hadn't lifted the lyrics from a poem somewhere; it stuck out to me that way. But listening after that, there's some decent attention to sound in some of the others, too, which ... it seems like a rarity with lyrics.