Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes
(Sub Pop, 2008)

There is no feeling in the world that equates to falling in love with a new band. It’s about commiseration through the craft of songwriting, about consuming the output of an individual, or group of individuals, that are completely different beings from yourself, living in another country, another age, another life, but despite the dissimilarities, you are fully, incomprehensibly, moved by their art. It reminds you why you live for music in the first place. These love affairs occur, oh I dunno, I’d say less than 10 times a year. How often do you really find a new favorite band? Sure, I find much to appreciate with the majority of music I listen to these days. But doesn’t it feel so consequential when you’re asked what you’ve been into and you can recite the name and flavor of your new favorite band with effusive praise? That’s a sense of fulfillment we are all continuously seeking as music lovers.

Obviously (as I am prefacing a record review with that sentiment), the Fleet Foxes are such a band for me. A soaring collection of songs, the Fleet Foxes’ full-length, self-titled debut is the sonic equivalent of walking through miles of shaded, wooded trails on the backside of a mountain, and that elated feeling that happens when you emerge from the brush to find the sun on your face. Towering and adventurous, it’s without a doubt one of the richest records to emerge so far this year, full and warm, the stuff that wraps its arms around you while elevating you on solid, foundational legs. It’s euphoric but also mystically dark, harkening storybook settings and celestial images cast in themes of love, nature, family, relationships, and life. It’s not all giddy bliss, though. Darker themes are prevalent too, like in “Tiger Mountain Peasant Sun”: “Through the forest / Down to your grave / Where the birds wait / And the tall grasses wave / They do not know you anymore” and “He Doesn’t Know Why”: “Image and a light as the morning nears / You don’t say a single word of your last two years / Well you will be, you’ll reach the frontier / I didn’t understand, oh.”

The album artwork was my first indication of some of the darker complexities of Fleet Foxes. It’s a strange scene of an old marketplace, rife with peasants and pigs and birds and buying and eating and warring and baking and shoveling, all in golden rich hues, the marvels of an old society, people coexisting in their separate spheres of existence, the order of life. It’s an imposing image but also quaint. It’s a scene that’s been invaded by the very nature of humanity; the intricacies of life’s realities craft a mood around the aesthetic of the album.

Fleet Foxes have a solid grip on an antiquated sound, but it’s the crux of harmonies that are in the driver’s seat of this record. The voices of the Foxes literally melt together. It’s a warm, dizzying blend of angelic tones coalescing into a nearly ethereal sound, a novel approach to the foundational elements of music. It’s rooted, very firmly with its feet in the ground, evoking the solidarity of ’70s rockers like Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young and the Beach Boys, with its threads of old-timey folk, classical, gospel, and an Eastern edge even appearing in some tracks.

Highlights abound, each one ascending to pristine, idyllic heights. My personal favorites are the hymnal “Tiger Mountain Peasant Sun”; the dark and stunning “Your Protector”; “Blue Ridge Mountains” (which I lived among for five great years and am personally somewhat obsessed with); “Meadowlarks”, which is just about the most gentle song I’ve ever heard and immediately makes me feel peaceful; and the quaint, quiet closing “Oliver James” that lovingly echoes and closes out this gem of a record: “And you will remember when you rehearsed the actions of / An innocent and anxious mother full of anxious love.”

This is not an overblown record, but it is incredibly grand. This is not cerebral music, it’s just really beautiful. And for a sound that makes me feel and find the light that’s out there to be cast on my face after emerging from the darker side of a journey, there is little more I could hope for. I’m in love.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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