Record #391: Fleet Foxes – Crack-Up (2017)

Looking back a decade* I don’t think anyone could have guessed the immense impact Fleet Foxes would have on the indie scene.

And while it’s true that Fleet Foxes themselves have never received much mainstream recognition, their acolytes certainly did. Their folk pop debut LP, with its particular palette of acoustic instruments, thick harmonies, and breakneck strumming patterns, opened wide the gates for all the Mumfords, Lumineers, Monsters, Men, and Magnetic Zeros that would follow the Foxes’ map right into top 40 radio stations and car commercials.

But Fleet Foxes were not satisfied to float on the rising deluge of their copycats. Instead, their sophomore outing found them turning inward. Anyone looking for anything as bouncing and immediate as “White Winter Hymnal” was sorely disappointed. Rather, the tracklist was filled with ominous baroque opuses. Songs took unexpected twists and turns, ending up in very different places than they started (see: the eleven minute “The Shrine/An Argument,” “Helplessness Blues”). If Fleet Foxes was the sound of vagrants playing guitar in the woods, Helplessness Blues was the chants of a group of prophets standing on the ocean’s edge forecasting the end of days.

And yet, Helplessness Blues seems almost poppy compared to Crack-Up.

In the six years since Helplessness Blues, the promised apocalypse came. And Fleet Foxes is right in the middle of it.

This album is less Helplessness Blues’ chameleon than a cuttlefish. Helplessness Blues’ colors shifted, but slowly. Crack-Up is a constant flash of transforming hues.

Keys change between lines of a verse. Choruses appear once and are contorted on their coda. Tracks fade between eachother without stopping to breathe. Which sometimes makes it confusing, as many of the tracks play like many songs played as a medley.

This is far and away the most ambitious thing Fleet Foxes or any of their contemporaries have done. This is the headier moments of their previous albums stretched into a full-length.

When their debut landed on us, I often described Fleet Foxes as “folksy Beach Boys.” If their self-titled was Pet Sounds, this is their Smile. An album that features all the same colors, but arranged in a massive baroque pop suite that is as inviting as it is impenetrable.

*(yes–Fleet Foxes’ first EP was released eleven years ago)

Record #293: Joan Baez – Blessed Are… (1971)

Record #293: Joan Baez - Blessed Are… (1971)
At some point, someone decided that what unassuming folk songstress Joan Baez needed was a big budget double album. While Joan moved further and further from the bare recordings of her debut with each...

 

At some point, someone decided that what unassuming folk songstress Joan Baez needed was a big budget double album. While Joan moved further and further from the bare recordings of her debut with each subsequent release, Blessed Are… is a massive affair. Most of the songs have about a dozen people involved, and many of the songs have pushed past the boundary of folk straight into country western.

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Record #288: Joan Baez – Joan Baez (1960)

Record #288: Joan Baez - Joan Baez (1960) Three years ago, I was sorting through my records and said to myself, “why do I have so much Joan Baez? I haven’t even listened to these.” Realizing that there were many other records I also hadn’t played. I...

 

Three years ago, I was sorting through my records and said to myself, “why do I have so much Joan Baez? I haven’t even listened to these.” Realizing that there were many other records I also hadn’t played. I started this very blog, anticipating that it’d take me about a year to get through my 400 piece collection. I was wrong, and it’s taken me three years to get to the very discography that inspired the project in the first place.

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Record #253: Beck – Morning Phase (2014)

To say that Beck is one of the most celebrated artists of the last twenty years is a bit of a misnomer. Beck is in fact three or four separate artists fighting for power. You have the hip hop ironist (Mellow Gold, Odelay, The Information), the rock & roll archivist and experimentalist (the Record Club, the Song Book), pop classicist (Guero, Midnight Vultures), and space-bound, heart-rending singer-songwriter (Sea Change). Of all of Beck’s faces, his earnest face has always been my favorite. Sea Change is one of my favorite records of all time, its tender ballads paired with Nigel Godrich’s ambient production. And as much as I love The Information, and Guero and the like, I’ve long wished for a return to Sea Change’s earnestness. This year, Mr. Hansen delivered.

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Record #250: Burl Ives – My Gal Sal and Other Favorites (1965)

Even if you don’t know you do, you know who Burl Ives is. It may be only from his role as the sunglasses-wearing snowman in the claymation Christmas movies, but you know who he is. And even when he isn’t singing about the colors of reindeers’ noses, Mr. Ives brings the same timeless gentility to everything he does, as opposed to Bing Crosby, whose charm was lost as soon as he strayed from the fireplace-glow that made his Christmas songs so unforgettable. Burl Ives, on the other hand, is aware of the magic he conjures, and he casts his spell upon every song on this record.