Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes - Sub Pop - 2008

One of the most anticipated releases this year is certainly this disc from Fleet Foxes. They had gotten quite a bit of attention based off of their “Sun Giant” EP and based off of their tour with Blitzen Trapper earlier this year. I checked them out when they were here at Schuba’s earlier in the year and I thought they were quite good, and I was also a big fan of the EP as well. The album finally dropped on us today, and while it is an incredibly solid album, I think it maybe doesn’t quite hit the home run I thought it would because it at times fails to broaden its horizons enough to really take that next step to greatness.

Part of the great appeal of these guys in my book is the great vocal harmonies (almost Crosby, Stills and Nash-esque) and the very old school type of songs that these guys bring to the table. The danger however in this kind of very specific type of sound is that you can get trapped, and where their EP didn’t show any weakness in this area, I think the album suffers a little from lack of variety. The way the album starts out is completely brilliant I think, and the 1-2-3 punch of “Sun It Rises” into “White Winter Hymnal” into “Ragged Wood” is utterly perfect, but the album for me kind of falls a little flat after that and never quite manages to maintain that pace of perfection. The first 3 songs are so good that it kind of overshadows the rest of the album I think, and you can view that as a good or a bad thing. Good because it starts out so well or bad because it never quite matches that same level of brilliance. I think the ultimate problem with the album is that it really treads the same territory from beginning to end, and while it does it well, I think it would have done much better with some more variety to break up the similar sounds. So therein lies the problem because the best variety on the album lies in the first 3 tracks. “Quiet Houses” is one of the songs in the middle part of the album that actually brings a little variety and it sounds really good. The finishing song “Oliver James” is a very good finishing song, and is a standout, but I think they kind of lose their way through the middle of the album so that it is not as powerful as it could be.

I don’t really mean to suggest that this album is bad in any way, it is actually quite good, and if you liked the EP you will certainly like this album. I think the thing to keep in mind however is that I think where they had a chance to add in more variety and flesh out the kinds of songs on the EP and bring us something really revolutionary, this album largely becomes an extension of the EP aside from the first 3 songs. But then again, those first 3 songs are really, really fucking good.

BV Rate: 77

Fleet Foxes - Sun It Rises - From Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes - Ragged Wood - From Fleet Foxes