Fleet Foxes

by Steven in Album Reviews, Musician Reviews, Reviews, bands to watch

Everyone can appreciate a beautiful voice. I don’t care what kind of music you are into…there is always THAT voice for each genre–that voice which, when you hear it for the first time, convinces you that there are few things more welcome to your ears.

Singers today come in a variety of singing abilities; I’ll admit that I enjoy the nasal whining/screaming of singers just as much as I do the beautiful crooning of a well-weathered singer/songwriter (more often than not, I like the former). But the trick for pulling off the “beautiful voice”-kind-of-music is to find the right combination of a beautiful voice and…well, kinda obviously, beautiful song-writing. I don’t think many would argue that the majority of American Idol contestants have great voices (my one requisite pop-culture reference for the year), but when it comes to their collective ability to write a beautiful album, I think that it’s safe to assume that it leaves something to be desired.

Fleet Foxes’s self-titled LP has that golden ratio of beautiful voices and song-writing. The perfect combination that kinda (embarrassingly) leaves your mouth hanging open for the first few minutes of the album while sitting by yourself in your local coffee shop. And it’s delicious…

From the album’s a capella opening, the voices of Fleet Foxes draw the listener in to a dreamy, reverb-laden world of delicate harmonies, carefully enunciated lyrics, and creamy phrasing. While the instruments do eventually kick in, the peaceful calm of the album’s first few seconds endures throughout a mass of entangled guitar picking, tambourine hits, and epic bass drum booms. Rather than rooting the album in driving drums and rhythmic guitar strums, the majority of the tracks on the album have scattered pickings of “smaller-sounding” instruments: mandolin, banjo, etc. Ultimately, the choice of instrumentation, rolling verses, and the 3- or 4-part harmonies create a sense of idyllic wandering. [I mean "wandering" in the best possible way...] The LP is a gorgeous collection of country/folk songs from a group of musicians who you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be good at this type of music.

Fleet Foxes hails from Seattle, WA…complete with shoulder-length hair, bushy beards, and enough flannel to even make an Alabama-native such as myself green with envy. Yeah…as if these guys didn’t SOUND amazing enough to garner your support…they also LOOK amazing. Bottom line though: This debut LP is a masterpiece in beautiful folk music, and I can say without any reserve that it was worth every penny I paid. While you may feel differently about the purchase depending on your proclivity towards this genre of music, there’s no denying that this five-piece from Seattle has created an admirable album that at least deserves your appreciation, if not your twelve bucks.