For the last three years, Robin Pecknold has been chasing sound. Something better, something beyond the good vibrations of 2008’s ‘Fleet Foxes‘, something hardly believable to anyone who happened upon that earth-shaker of an album. Well, shut up and believe it. That sound is ‘Helplessness Blues‘.
Let’s start with that title track, unashamedly full of heart-rending sadness and wide-eyed wonder. Pecknold never was one to write about surfing or hand-holding; here he takes on childhood misconceptions, adolescent defiance and defeat, even the distant, wistful fantasies of old age. So concerned with the rights and wrongs of his past, present and future life, this helpless voice, so fraught and longing, is brave enough to admit he doesn’t know the answers yet. Why should he? He’s young. He’s still looking for them.
‘Helplessness Blues’ is a record quite taken with this spirit of discovery; we’re taken to waterfalls, to remote islands, to the depths of the ocean. Aztecs, nomads, magicians and wishing wells all make their appearances and impacts on the careful listener. The sense of awe and wonder in these songs is impossible to overstate – in ‘The Shrine/An Argument‘, Pecknold sings “sunlight over me no matter what I do” and he sounds like a fire watcher on the Rocky Mountains, his lonely cries and sighs carrying for miles around.
Make no mistake, Fleet Foxes have taken their time on this material for a reason. They’re in no hurry to get to the end of their songs either. Vast and layered, they catch you by surprise with shifting, intricate arrangements. Soft, serene ballads are apt to burst into blasts of rolling, righteous thunder. Time signatures change with the slightest dust of a cymbal. Strangely, these methods don’t feel forced or pretentious. The sounds and the songs are allowed to move, to breathe, to advance at their own pace. It’s just that this pace has carte blanche to run, skip, shuffle or scuttle any which way crab-wise.
Hardcore Foxfans, take heart – you needn’t gnash your teeth or tear out your beard hair. All this experimentation and innovation doesn’t mean Pecknold has forgotten how to write a song you can hum. ‘Sim Sala Bim‘, for instance, shimmers and billows with mystic hooks; the booming rhythms and quivering slide licks of ‘Grown Ocean‘ are destined to prompt wild, joyous footwork in the streets and living rooms of folkies everywhere.
Whether you have to download it, shoplift the CD or take a sleeping bag into a HMV listening booth, find a way to listen to ‘Helplessness Blues’. Even Robin Pecknold, 25, of Seattle, Washington, says “all my life I will wait to attain it”. And that’s quoting him only very slightly out of context. True Fleet Foxes story there.
Levity and potential libel aside, let’s be a bit serious for a paragraph. Some will start calling ‘Helplessness Blues’ the best album of 2011. That’s a nice bit of recognition if you can get it, but listening to the last murmurs of ‘Grown Ocean’s close harmony coda, the distinct and lasting impression is that of having heard sounds that will outlive generations.
Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks‘ lives on as a striking, relevant album over 40 years after its release. Robert Johnson’s collected works have lasted several lifetimes after his death. Fleet Foxes have borrowed a little from both men here and unquestionably made it their own. This isn’t the first, and it absolutely should not be the last we hear from these beardy young minstrels. Get this album.
(Simon Moore)