Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

Sub Pop 2008

Rating: 8/10

Checking out this album on Amazon, I noticed that the online-retailer mega-giant recommended that this debut went “better together” with the latest My Morning Jacket release. I couldn’t say it came as a surprise; critics everywhere have been bandying about Fleet Foxes as the latest MMJ southern-fried rock outfit, and the Internet hype machine long ago praised them as the next big thing.

After one listen to Fleet Foxes, it’s hard not to make the obvious connections between this five-piece from Seattle and that five-piece from Kentucky that has distinguished itself from the rest of indie rock with its focus on Americana and country-rock. Hell, Fleet Foxes’ singer, Robin Pecknold, sounds so eerily like My Morning Jacket’s Jim James that I was hard-pressed to believe this wasn’t a MMJ side-project at first listen. Pecknold even has the carefully unwashed, longhaired mane down pat.

Despite the initial similarities, however, Fleet Foxes does manage to move out from the looming shadow of their more famous indie rock brethren, shying away from the experimentalism that has defined MMJ for the past few years and focusing more on the folksy, Appalachian rock of the It Still Moves era.

Fleet Foxes takes more from the backcountry, lumberjacking side of their home state than the more modern, grunge-inflected era. Their songs sound like they should be piping lazily out the door of some lonely cottage high in the mountains rather than the windows of some hipster’s Prius. “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” wanders along on a gentle acoustic guitar line and Pecknold’s powerful voice singing about “where the birds wait / and the tall grasses wave.” This is pure American-bred rock ‘n roll at its finest, calling to mind not just bands like My Morning Jacket and Wilco but also old standard-bearers like Woody Guthrie.

The music is appropriately pastoral and driving at different times, ranging from “Sun It Rises” dreamy harmonizing and plucked guitar to the rollicking drums and triumphant chorus on “Ragged Wood.” Pecknold is clearly the star here, his confident voice anchoring each song with presence and the ability to teleport the listener straight into the wild settings of the band’s tunes.

Perhaps the best aspect of the album is Fleet Foxes’ unerring ability to craft incredibly resilient, catchy melodies one after the other. This isn’t a country-rock band that lets it all out in a raging storm of guitar heroics; instrumental breaks in general are kept to a minimum. Fleet Foxes know how to craft a tune. The harmonizing between the piano and Pecknold on “He Doesn’t Know Why,” the ‘60s sing-a-along of “White Winter Hymnal,” nearly every song has a melody that is immediately pleasing to the ear.

If there’s anything to be held against this album, it’s the unfortunate tendency for the album to blend together near the halfway mark. Pecknold may have a distinctive voice, but he sounds pretty much the same on every song. Lyrically the album is fairly vanilla, sticking to simple tried-and-true themes like love, the beauty of the country life, and solitude. While the music is unfailingly strong, the lack of any major stylistic differences between any two songs makes some confusion as to which is which unavoidable.

For a debut by a band that was practically unknown a year ago, however, Fleet Foxes is a fantastic piece of work. Fleet Foxes has the potential to be one of America’s great musical poets, and their first release should firmly cement their place as not just another My Morning Jacket clone.

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