Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Like very nearly every worthwhile thing, making this album was not easy; it was a difficult second album to make. Drawing inspiration from folk/rock from about 1965 to 1973, and Van Morrisons ASTRAL WEEKS in particular, HELPLESSNESS BLUES sees Fleet Foxes heighten and extend themselves, adding instrumentation (clarinet, the music box, pedal steel guitar, lap steel guitar, Tibetan singing bowls, vibraphone, etc., along with more traditional band instrumentation), with a focus on clear, direct lyrics, and an emphasis on group vocal harmonies. We have it on good authority that the album is called HELPLESSNESS BLUES for at least a couple of reasons. One, it's kind of a funny title. Secondly, one of the prevailing themes of the album is the struggle between who you are and who you want to be or who you want to end up, and how sometimes you are the only thing getting in the way of that. Having heard HELPLESSNESS BLUES, we mean to get out of it's way. Album Tracks 1. Montezuma 2. Bedouin Dress 3. Sim Sala Bim 4. Battery Kinzie 5. The Plains/Bitter Dancer 6. Helplessness Blues 7. The Cascades 8. Lorelei 9. Someone You'd Admire 10. The Shrine/An Argument 11. Blue Spotted Tail 12. Grown Ocean

Songs grapple with perspective and perception, conscience and consequence, understanding and upheaval. Interconnected ideas appear; songs often become self-referential, folding in upon themselves. Yet underneath the elaborate musical layers and vivid lyrical imagery, there is something straightforwardly timeless in this debut. Album Tracks 1. All That We Can See 2. Tourniquet 3. November Through June 4. Spy in the House of Memories 5. Any Other God 6. Dance for Hours 7. Out of Orbit 8. Contortionist

Seattle's Fleet Foxes make such complex, harmonic, 70s inspired folk rock, it's hard to believe that the band's principle songwriter, Robin Pecknold, is only 21 years old. There's a moment on David Crosby's InchLaughingInch where Cros, Joni and the whole gang hit a harmony that might be the most gorgeous moment in the history of recorded music. The Fleet Foxes know that moment and they go for it. This EP is a precursor to the band's debut, RAGGED WOOD, out in June. Album Tracks 1. Sun Giant 2. Drops in the River 3. English House 4. Mykonos 5. Innocent Son