After two full lengths and an EP comprised largely of solo acoustic guitar and voice with the occasional harmony overdub, Sam Beam must have finally realized that he can get a little louder in the studio than he can in his attic.
folk
Record #211: Iron & Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days (2004)
It’s almost unbelievable that in the early 2000s, in the wake of a huge rock revival that glorified DIY guitar rock (the White Stripes), sneering punk vocalists (the Vines, Hot Hot Heat), cooler-than-cool swagger (the Strokes, the Hives), attitude-is-everything post punk (Interpol, the Killers), and ironic hair metal (the Darkness, Jet), one unassuming man with an acoustic guitar could whisper-sing his way to notoriety.
Record #171: Fleetwood Mac – Rumours (1977)
Today, Rumours celebrates its thirty-sixth anniversary. And in those thirty-six years, it has been played and overplayed. Only in most cases, “overplayed” has a negative connotation.
Record #170: Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac, or, The White Album (1975)
It’s so strange to think that by the time the Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks era of Fleetwood Mac began, the group had already recorded nine albums. Fleetwood Mac had always been a sort of amorphous collective that placed little importance on the lead singer in question, which isn’t surprising, considering the group’s very name was derived from the members of the rhythm section.
But here, with the addition of Buckingham and Nicks, the power of the frontmen begin to match the chops of the musicians that had always played masterfully behind (or despite) them. Continue reading
Record #169: Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues (2011)
The question to any perfect debut is “Where can we go from here?”
Their self-titled full-length was as close to flawless as a record could get—it’s golden harmonies and Seattle-bluegrass instrumentation combined to form a record that was truly timeless, sounding traditional and contemporary at once.
And so when they returned to the studio to record what would undoubtedly be one of the most anticipated records of the year, they decided (wisely) to expand rather than progress. Continue reading
Record #168: Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (2008)
I remember the first time I ever heard White Winter Hymnal. Someone had posted the creeping, stop motion video online, and I was spellbound. I gobbled up everything of Fleet Foxes I could–the record, radio performances, their Judee Still cover on Black Cab Sessions, everything. When I returned to college that fall, I spread White Winter Hymnal like gospel (along with Bon Iver, who broke through that same summer). Their mix of Beach Boy harmonies and mountain folk filtered through Seattle sensibilities was at once fresh and familiar. Just how familiar was revealed to me when my roommate responded to the album with “that was Fleet Foxes? I thought you were listening to James Taylor.”
Record #167: Fleet Foxes – Sun Giant (2007)
The phrase “arrived with their sound fully formed” gets thrown around so much that if music critique had their own annual list of banned phrases, it would surely appear in multiple editions. But when confronting Sun Giant, the debut EP by Seattle indie folk giants Fleet Foxes, there’s little else to say.
Record #126: The Decemberists – The Crane Wife (2006)
The tragic thing about the Decemberists is that their greatest asset is also their biggest liability.
They’re universally lauded or discounted as bookworm friendly, concept heavy, occasionally prog-leaning folk rock, and if you don’t have time for lyrics you need to look up in the dictionary or 12 minute three-part folk-prog suites (namely “The Island”), then don’t even bother.
But, as often as that description is used disparagingly, it’s used by fans to describe why they love the Decemberists–because some people love parsing lyrics and trilogies of songs based on Japanese folk tales that appear out of order on the album, and some of these people also love that the lead guitarist is also credited with playing hurdy-gurdy on the album (unsurprisingly, the Decemberists are from Portland).
Record #114: Danielson – Tri-Danielson, Vol. 2: Omega (1998)
Part two of Danielson’s ambitious Tri-Danielson project, Omega is slightly less accessible than Alpha, with a denser track listing and fewer standouts. But to be fair, the entire project is hard to understand.
Record #113: Danielson – Tri-Danielson, Vol. 1: Alpha (1998)
If you don’t know who Danielson (slash Danielson Famile slash Danielson Family slash Brother Danielson slash Daniel Smith) is, you might not be interested at all in his music, which sounds something like a gypsy family band fronted by a helium voiced Gospel camp preacher. Once, while listening to the Omega disc of this double project on my iPod, I took an ear out and put it in a friend’s ear without any warning about what he might here. His face turned from curiosity to displeasure as he said, “why would you do that to me?”