Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (Bella Union)
5/5
By: Sam Crawford
It's early in the morning and I'm making breakfast in the kitchen, Fleet Foxes debut album playing on the stereo. My housemate walks in and pauses, contemplating the music he hears for a minute. "What's this? This sounds like real music," he says.
Knowing his musical tastes, I take this to mean that it suits his tempered low-key style; he favours acoustic instruments and generally steers clear of most modern music with hip attitudes and ultra polished production. I however, think about that word he used; "real," and understand this is real music. I look out of the kitchen window at the blue sky, the cluster of greenery in the garden, kids playing outside. Fleet Foxes sounds like it has been dug up from the earth, left in the sun to grow and soak up all the elements of life and nature that surrounds it.
The album opens with 'Sun It Rises;' starting out with serene a capella harmonies, evoking the scene of a bunch of Midwest American guys sat happily drinking in their porch on a hot summers evening, singing with a style that elicits the type of friendship bond that's attained by living and working next to someone all their lives. This is followed by melodic acoustic guitars, that strum along with a positive folk feel and a tinge of Neil Young. This is the accompanied by some wonderfully orchestrated vocals that chime out with ethereal wonder.
'Ragged Wood' jovially travels along like an off road ride through the countryside in the back of a pick-up truck, with the vocals sounding like they are being sung through the mountains; with an almost yodel-like element to them, while 'Tiger Mountain Peasant Song' is more subdued, utilising one guitar and a single vocal line, the lyrics "Dear shadow alive and well, how can the body die" poignantly capturing the solemn feel to the track.
Fleet Foxes delicate pop gems are constructed from tracks that combine to make up the strength of a titan tower house; every one of them a joy to listen to. 'He Doesn't Know Why' has celestial choir like harmonies with catchy melodic vocals, with the percussion adding simple texture while bringing subtle crescendos into play, while 'Your Protector' has a cinematic feel to it, with the chorus holding imagery of a heroic silent cowboy riding his horse through a western village.
Listening to this album in the summer, it feels like a fitting season to hear it. I also know that when I listen to it in the autumn or in winter or spring it will feel just as fitting. The philosopher Blaise Pascal once said "Nature is an infinite sphere of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere." Fleet Foxes encapsulate nature; the universality of timeless beauty is contained within every aspect of their makeup. Its real music. Let it grow and its roots will set deep.
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