Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

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