Album of the Week: Fleet Foxes- Fleet Foxes

It's all well and good to listen to experimental and challenging music, music with grime, sweat, and blood caked unto every note...but sometimes you need a reminder of what else is out there. Music that is impossibly catchy, un-apologetically classicist in its songwriting while still being successful, or music that strives to uplift because it's just so damn beautiful. This kind of music is often unassuming in its greatness, in my opinion, because its immediacy has me wondering "is that it??" before realizing I don't need to apply the same scrutiny and work into appreciating it as I would the aforementioned "experimental, challenging" music.

The debut, self-titled album from Fleet Foxes resists this kind of criticism and desire to dig deeper. It makes you embarrassed of your critical faculties because it has a natural, organic, and pure beauty, as if complaining about it would be like complaining about a waterfall or a rose bush growing next to a farmhouse. That doesn't mean there isn't anything to say about it, so don't go away just yet.

While listening to Fleet Foxes I'm instantly reminded of what I think is half the reason most people hate indie/underground bands: the vocals. While I subscribe to the immortal words of David Berman of the Silver Jews--"All my favorite singers couldn't sing"--I can't pretend that some, or even most, people feel this way. Having a unique voice gives a band character and makes it more memorable, but this isn't what most listeners want. They want something appropriate to the music and a bit more...obvious, whether it be angry grunting set to metal or the flat speak-singing most rappers employ. While the singer of the Fleet Foxes may not have much personality, this is one of the prettiest albums in recent memory due solely to the vocal performances. Recalling Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and sometimes Young), the gold standard of harmonized vocals in rock music, Fleet Foxes also draw comparisons to contemporaries like My Morning Jacket and Band Of Horses. In case you don't follow, this means that the album is stuffed to bursting with soaring melodies and heartbreakingly pretty harmonies. Even if the singer is kind of faceless, he has to be for this kind of approach to work.

Though the music of Fleet Foxes is steeped in Americana, rustic folk, and classic rock, the whole thing reminds me a lot of the Flaming Lips's The Soft Bulletin in the way it uses staggeringly pretty orchestrated music to talk about dark lyrical themes. You don't really notice it at first, but on this album death is a recurring theme, along with general Appalachian malaise and introspection. 'He Doesn't Know Why', despite its prettiness, is the lament of a sibling for a brother who has been gone for two years, and who has been humbled by the world:
Penniless and tired with your hair grown long
I was looking at you there and your face looked wrong
memory is a fickle siren's song
I didn't understand
But, lyrics aside, the album is as pretty as I keep saying, the sort of music you idealize in your head when you use words like "lush", "ornate", and "gorgeous" to describe other bands or albums. Even the mostly instrumental 'Heard Them Stirring', which effectively uses wordless vocals in a way similar-to-but-entirely-different-from Animal Collective, is beautiful. Speaking of Animal Collective, some have noted their influence on this band though I suspect all they mean is a similar focus on using vocals in unique ways, as evidenced by the Collective-esque "row row row your boat" style of the singing on 'White Winter Hymnal', which is probably the most lush, ornate, and gorgeous song ever written about watching someone collapse from unnamed wounds and turn the snow "red as strawberries in the summertime." It's also worth praising the album for playing it loose with song structure, particularly the opener 'Sun It Rises', which begins with an a-capella section before the song proper begins, eventually closing things with a tacked on guitar outro that sounds like it might be beginning a different song before dropping out.

Fleet Foxes have here crafted one of the best debut albums in recent memory, containing some obvious influences but doing new and interesting things with them. Though normally I loathe bands repeating themselves, I wouldn't mind if Fleet Foxes released another album or two that was largely similar to this. After all, Fleet Foxes is like a countryside vacation simply too satisfying and too relaxing to never want to repeat.

Band of Horses- Cease To Begin

There's a phrase I often hear people begin statements with: "More of the same, but..." Taken on its own, this fragment doesn't explicitly declare a negative or positive conclusion. No, you need to finish it to add that in: "More of the same, but better" or "more of the same, but worse." As I am a cynic and lazy, I get bored of things really easily. It's not that I have ADD, it's that I know there's so much else out there to experience--movies, books, things I should be writing, videogames, conversations with friends and loved ones--that I feel I can't spare a moment on something that is "more of the same." To me, "more of the same" always implicitly means "more of the same, but worse" because most of life (like our jobs, eating, taking a shower, etc.) is more of the same. I don't know about you, but everyday I go to the bathroom and it's "more of the same", and even when it's "more of the same, but better" it's still not great.

It may seem like I'm rambling (I am), but this "more of the same" concept has captured my imagination as I listen to Cease To Begin. Personally, I think Band of Horses's first album is a bit overrated. While I like it a lot, it pretty much defines the '4 stars out of 5' rating for me because it's a good little album for what it is but it's never seemed as astonishing and fantastic as some reviewers have made it out to be. In short, Band of Horses are a 'second tier' band for me, "second tier" being bands that make good little albums that I like but don't rouse me enough from my couch to accost passersby in the street. With all of that said, then: Cease To Begin is more of the same. Just, "more of the same", mind you; not better, not worse.

Again, "more of the same" implies "bad" and "boring" to me, so let me be completely clear. Cease To Begin is every bit as good as Everything All The Time, but both albums are pretty similar. This isn't "more of the same, but different"; it's "more of the same, but equal." The band itself and some critics have pointed out that Cease To Begin is a touch more 'rustic' than their debut, but this mostly amounts to, say, honky tonk piano and handclaps on 'General Specific.' Since the album was recorded in the Carolinas, where the band currently resides, I expected more of the local flavor, but whatever. If anything Cease To Begin solidifies Band of Horses's sound, a blend best summed up by this awkward chunk of words: "My Morning Jacket's singer meets Built To Spill's clean upper register guitars, minus guitar solos and longer songs, plus a dash of country." Other than having a bit more country, the only detectable difference for me was that the album has more...confidence, for lack of a better word. The vagaries continue: the songs feel more majestic and...nocturnal, where on Everything All The Time there seemed to be a...humbleness and afternoon-ish-ness about the whole thing. But not a lazy country summer day kind of afternoon; rather, more of a 'concert taking place between 4 and sundown' kind of vibe. I wish I could be more specific, so let me offer this. Where Everything All The Time ended with the short acoustic singalong 'St. Augustine', Cease closes with a slow motion, moondance, slide guitar totin' ballad in 'Window Blues.'

While I could see someone making a case for one of these two albums as 'superior' to the other, I am not that person. I'm just not that into this band to really prefer one over the other. I think most of us are best off flipping a coin and picking one or the other. Cease To Begin may get some credit for not being a disappointing sophomore effort, but to these ears it's similar enough to their debut to almost (almost) make me want to call the band out for playing it safe. But...no. Cease To Begin is another solid '4 stars out of 5' set of songs from a band who may never surprise me but at least make a point of not letting me down.