Fleet Foxes Sing the Blues

Sean Pecknold/Sub Pop

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


There’s a moment towards the end of Fleet Foxes’ new album Helplessness Blues, during the song “The Shrine/An Argument,” where front man Robin Pecknold’s voice cracks in desperation. The fissure may be the emotional nadir of the record’s narrative, but it sends ripples down my spine—it’s probably been the highlight of my listening experience lately. For the first time, Pecknold dares to waver from his flawless vocal prowess, hinting at a darkness his listeners have rarely experienced from the angelic singer.

Helplessness Blues is not a huge departure from Fleet Foxes, the band’s first CD, but it possesses more moments of frustration and despair. By allowing these feelings to creep in, Fleet Foxes have created a more complicated and ambitious repertoire, strengthening their overall reach.

The band played all 20 songs from its cache at Oakland’s Fox Theatre last Thursday night. Though Fleet Foxes’ romantically ragged appearances and pastoral lyrics make them better suited to perform in a redwood grove than an indoor venue, the Fox’s vacuous depths and grand splendor allowed for rich listening. The place was packed, hundreds of bearded, plaid-clad fans huddled around the railings, waiting for a bit of magic. Massive gold statues of seated Aztec Gods lorded over the crowd. Lights dimmed and the world went violet. Fleet Foxes took the stage and played a seamless set, blending flutes, mandolins, guitars, and keys and highlighting their most precious entity: six wonderful voices. 

In their earlier album, most songs showcased these voices woven together into precise harmonies. Stories of revelry characterize this album for me; in “White Winter Hymnal,” for instance, the scene takes the form of a fairytale: “And scarves of red tied round their throats, to keep their little heads, from fallin in the snow, and I turn round and there you go.” Innocence sparkles the narrative.

Helplessness Blues maintains those immaculate harmonies, but Pecknold’s bare solo voice shows through more frequently. The pureness of earlier work has been pierced, leaving a narrator who is more vulnerable, betrayed, or, as the title suggests, helpless. In “The Shrine/An Argument,” the narrator mourns the loss of a lover: “In the driveway pulling away putting on your coat / In the ocean washing off my name from your throat.” Towards the end of the tune, an angsty bass clarinet* goes wild during a captivating improvisation. 

It’s hard not to associate this with Pecknold’s autobiography; his romantic relationship unraveled as the album came to fruition. It’s also been widely reported that the band had trouble mixing the CD, and they rerecorded most of the songs at one point. But if they struggled while casting the album, maybe it turned out for the best in the end. In Helplessness Blues, they embark on a dreamy, distraught adventure, one mired by shadows where once all was light. The contrast allows for a more fleshed-out live performance—with more instrumental variety and still plenty of room for pitch-perfect vocal tapestries.

*An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that the instrument was a saxophone.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate