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 #277: Jeremy Enigk – Vale Oso (2009)

Record #277: Jeremy Enigk - Vale Oso (2009) I should be forthcoming: Sunny Day Real Estate is one of my favorite bands ever. I mean ever. And it’s been that way eleven years. The first time I heard Radiohead (who now bears the same distinction) I...

I should be forthcoming: Sunny Day Real Estate is one of my favorite bands ever. I mean ever. And it’s been that way eleven years. The first time I heard Radiohead (who now bears the same distinction) I thought “his voice sounds a bit like Jeremy.” When mewithoutYou (another all time favorite) released a song with Jeremy on guest vocals, I wept real tears. I spent more than is reasonable for vinyl copies of How it Feels to be Something On and The Rising Tide (which my dog ate the day I got it). I have been pushing hard for vinyl reissues of World Waits and The Fire Theft.

So why did it take me five years to listen to his third proper solo record? Well, I really don’t know.

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Record #236: Janelle Monae – The Archandroid (2010)

the archandroid
Janelle Monae is a chameleon of the finest form. She has been leveled comparisons to James Brown, Prince, David Bowie, and Jack White, and trekking through the monolithic The Archandroid, each one of them stands up to scrutiny.
Monae sets her feet firmly in funk and soul and gropes wildly in all directions grabbing a bit of hip hop, a bit of garage rock, a bit of disco, a bit of MPB, all dashed with a healthy dose of afro-futurism.
And the most telling of Monae’s talents is that such a disparate sounding record not only works, but excels, even with such a goofy premise behind it. Because let’s be honest: a genre-spanning concept album about a robot who is also the Messiah who falls in love with her maker in a city where dancing and love are outlawed should be ridiculous to the point of being unlistenable. But it’s actually one of the best records to come out of the last ten years.

Record #232: BRAIDS – Flourish // Perish (2013)

2011’s Native Speaker was one of those albums that snuck up on me without much fuss, but it crashed onto my year end list like a whirlwind. It was a bipolar affair, slipping from vulgar to tender within the same verse as the tracks jumped from manic exuberance to serene atmospherics  as the record progressed. And with the announcement that their keyboardist had stepped down, it seemed like Flourish // Perish would spend most of its time in the chirpy, bouncing art pop portion of Braids’ repertoire.

But that’s not the case at all. Rather, Braids merged their two extremes into one beat-ridden, ethereal whole.

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