Psychedelic

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

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
Looking back a decade* I don’t think anyone could have guessed the immense impact Fleet Foxes would have on the indie scene.
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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.
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*(yes–Fleet Foxes’ first EP was released eleven years ago)

Record #321: Can – Ege Bamyasi (1972)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
ege bamyasi

The last time I wrote about Can, I worried if the internet could handle anymore of its finite data being used to write about the legendary Krautrock pioneers.
Because friends, there have been terrabytes written on their importance and influence.
​The lion’s share of that code is occupied with musings on this album.
Ege Bamyasi is, with no room for debate, Can’s most long-reaching record. It found the group tightening their free-form, chaotic noodling into slicker, more sophisticated arrangements. While they would perfect this approach on their next album, Future Days (my personal favorite), Ege Bamyasi is absolutely unparalleled in its cultural importance. It’s been covered by Stephen Malkmus and Beck, sampled by Kanye West, and offered Spoon their band name. And it’s not for no reason: the songs contained on this disc are incredible. Pinch creeps darkly across a hardbop shuffle. Sing Swan Song is as morose and soothing a ballad the group ever wrote. One More Night writes Stereolab a love letter twenty years in advance. Vitamin C shivers with manic energy. Soup rocks and rolls heavier with a tempo that accelerates until it crashes into whooshing and whirling tape effects and formless improvisation. I’m So Green is as far from that as you can get–a simple, short, happy pop song (remember: Beck covered it). Spoon is a nocturnal, half-asleep chant set to a slow samba. Every minute of this record is brilliant, and it is deserving of its crown as King of the Krautrock Albums.

Record #252: Jefferson Airplane – Crown of Creation (1968)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’ve never heard After Bathing at Baxter’s, the album between Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow and Crown of Creation, but I hear that it was a marked departure from the folksy noodling on Surrealistic Pillow in favor of for straightforward rock. But, one rock album must have been enough for them, because Crown of Creation is nowhere near the acid rock fest you might expect from Jefferson Airplane’s reputation (or the album cover–they’re inside of a nuclear blast! Come on!).

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Record #116: David Bowie – Space Oddity (1969)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

space oddity
Space Oddity is not David Bowie’s first album, but it is the first Bowie album anyone cares about.
Its title track, with its tragic astronaut and hand clap coda is still well known, and is still the first song anyone thinks of when they think of Bowie. This album would be notable even if just for its single, but the amazing thing is that the rest of the album doesn’t dwell in its shadow.

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