May 3, 2011

Three years after the release of their critically lauded, self-titled debut album, Seattle’s Fleet Foxes have returned with “Helplessness Blues,” a record that’s just as pure and stirring as their initial offering, but more challenging structurally and focused in an altogether different direction.

The band’s growing legion of fans will have to work harder to get to the bottom of many of these tunes; the majority of them aren’t narratives so much as elliptical character studies. But the extra commitment pays off— like its predecessor, this is a pop record that’s largely unconcerned with the dictates of the modern pop music scene, and it’s all the more memorable for its insistence on remaining unmoored.

Inspired by such natural, free-flowing creations as Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” and British folkie Roy Harper’s cult touchstone, “Stormcock,” with recognizable doses of Dylan, CSN&Y, Simon & Garfunkel, and Richard Thompson haunting several tunes, “Helplessness Blues” stands as a great deal more than the hoped-for solid follow-up to an instant classic. At its best, it’s the open diary of an optimistic new musical voice trying to plant his feet in a world that appears to be spinning out of control. And that battle between idealism and apprehension often pulsates with great drama.

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The first words sung on “Montezuma,” “Helplessness Blues”’ haunting and haunted opening track, reveals that the Foxes’ lead singer, songwriter, and overall creative guide, Robin Pecknold, is looking inward with his new writing; the pronoun “I” runs throughout the album’s tunes:

So now I am older than my mother and father
When they had their daughter
Now, what does that say about me?
Oh, how could I dream of
Such a helpless and true love
Oh, could I wash my hands of just looking out for me?

These are not the thoughts of a popular new recording artist trying to score a major pile of cash on his second album.

I became Facebook friends with Pecknold back in 2009, when his father, Greg, wrote me a very kind email complimenting me on my review of his son’s first record, and, although I wouldn’t claim to “know” Robin, it soon became clear via his posts that he was struggling with the material that would eventually comprise “Helplessness Blues,” and, like anybody else with half a brain or half a heart, he’d been distressed by what was going on in the world around him, especially the slowly unfolding horror of the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast.

Pecknold is also a folk music aficionado of the first order— he and his friends (the actual ones, as opposed to Facebook pen pals) turned me on to a pile of 60s and 70s British folk rockers who had never appeared on my radar screen before, and I’ve listened to a lot of music in my time. It’s this combination of real-world concern and an understanding of Fleet Foxes’ place in a long, ever-evolving musical lineage that breathes such perceptible life into the band’s music. In the grand folk tradition, they look forward by looking back.

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There’s no clearer evidence of this than on “Helplessness Blues”’ title track, which unfolds like a mating of early-60s protest music and Walt Whitman. If Pecknold edges close to purple prose at points, his and the rest of the band’s performance in the second half of the tune keeps the experience floating on a veritable cushion of sound.

“Helplessness Blues”

I was raised up believin'
I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake, distinct among snowflakes
Unique in each way you can see

And now after some thinkin'
I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery
Servin' something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon, you will see

What's my name, what's my station
Oh, just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night
that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down, and be grateful
and say "Sure, take all that you see"
to the men who move only in dimly-lit halls
and determine my future for me

And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon, you will see

If I know only one thing
It’s that everything that I see
of the world outside is so inconceivable
Often, I barely can speak

Yeah, I'm tongue-tied and dizzy
and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues
Why should I wait for anyone else

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I'll come back to you someday
Soon, myself

If I had an orchard
I'd work 'till I'm raw
If I had an orchard
I'd work 'till I'm sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store

Gold hair in the sunlight
My light in the dark
If I had an orchard I'd work 'till I'm sore
If I had an orchard I’d work ‘till I’m sore

Some day I’ll be like the man on the screen

That really is lovely, and the input of Fleet Foxes as a whole shouldn’t be discounted here. The instrumentation and harmonies throughout the album are so rich and consuming it can make your head spin— they’re a terrific band that generates a full yet spacious sound. For the record (no pun intended) the group consists of Pecknold (guitar, lead vocals), Skyler Skjelset (guitar, mandolin), Christian Wargo (bass, vocals), Casey Wescott (keyboards, mandolin, vocals), Joshua Tillman (drums, vocals, arrangements), and Morgan Henderson (multi-instrumentalist, arrangements.)

As on "Fleet Foxes," I think special recognition should be given to Tillman, whose drumming relies heavily on timpani and almost tribal pounding, but can melt into washes of cymbals and other more subtle textures when needed.

If there’s a defining element of Fleet Foxes sound, it would have to be the layered vocals and those invitingly anachronistic drums. It’s a remarkably flexible, trancelike approach to delivering Pecknold’s songs, and quite ingenious in its way.

The only real instrumental miscalculation on the entire record is a blast of free-jazz bass clarinet on one tune that’s clearly intended to be jarring, but too violently and insistently breaks the ongoing reverie. Still, it’s an encouraging sign that the group is adventurous enough to try it. Certainly, the last artist I ever expected to be reminded of on a Fleet Foxes record is Eric Dolphy!

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A more effective addition to “Helplessness Blues” sonic pallet is a pronounced Middle Eastern texture that makes perhaps its most powerful appearance about mid-way through the unearthly, Cohen-esque “Sim Sala Bim.”

“Sim Sala Bim”

It’s tempting to play “guess the influence” with Fleet Foxes, which probably isn’t completely fair, but still a lot of fun. Usually, you’ll catch just an instrumental coloring, like a split-second of guitar on “Helplessness Blues” that sounds inspired by Richard and Linda Thompson’s “Pour Down Like Silver” or what appears to be a direct lift from the coda to Thompson’s “The Great Valerio” at the beginning of “The Plains/Bitter Dancer”…which then builds into a stunning, layered choral arrangement that could have wandered over from Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” sessions.

And then there’s the sweet gallop of “Lorelai,” which should one day be placed under glass with both Dylan’s “4th Time Around” and Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood” (the melody of which Dylan claims Lennon swiped from him anyway) for further inspection by the planet's folkies.

“Lorelai”

I’d complain about that if there were actually something wrong with it.

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“Helplessness Blues” closer, “Grown Ocean,” may be the album’s crowning achievement, a summation of Pecknold's desire to keep looking forward in spite of the travails of the world at large. Here they are performing it, quite intensely, on BBC’s “Later with Jools Holland.”

In that dream I'm as old as the mountains
Still is starlight reflected in fountains
Children grown on the edge of the ocean
Kept like jewelry, kept with devotion
In that dream moving slow through the morning

You would come to me then without answers
Lick my wounds and remove my demands for now
Eucalyptus and orange trees are blooming
In that dream there's no darkness alluded
In that dream moving slow through the morning time

In that dream I could hardly contain it
All my life I will wait to attain it

I know someday the smoke will all burn off
All these voices I'll someday have turned off
I will see you someday when I've woken
I'll be so happy just to have spoken
I'll have so much to tell you about it

In that dream I could hardly contain it
All my life I will wait to attain it

Wide-eyed walker, don't betray me
I will wake one day, don't delay me
Wide eyed leaver
Always going

I’m 48 years-old, and people who know me well, or read all of my writing, realize I’m not a complete cynic. I have an often dark sense of humor, but still expect far more from the world than embedded cynicism allows. But I have to tell you— when I listen to “Grown Ocean,” I believe the same way I believed when I first started listening to music passionately at the age of 16.

I figured I was done with the possibility of coming full-circle like this via pop music, that it was no longer an option now that Miles Davis and Monk mean as much to me as rock & roll once did. But here I am, convinced.

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In closing, I want to say a few things about Robin Pecknold, and the rare position he’s beginning to occupy in the hearts and minds of a certain strain of music fan.

By reaching the secret, common ground that thousands of his listeners hold in their hearts, then articulating those hidden mysteries through passionate, uplifting music, Pecknold appears to be entering a realm of secular sainthood that sometimes gets foisted upon particularly inspiring musicians, and that’s very tricky territory to negotiate at length. Some of our longest standing musical icons were toppled by the weight of it at one time or another, or have consciously attempted to shake free of it over the course of their careers.

I’m not saying this ascension is Pecknold’s goal - How could it be? - or even that it’s a logical reaction to a musician’s gifts. But I’m a student of rock history (for lack of a more fitting phrase, we’ll place Fleet Foxes in the broad category of “rock”), and songwriters who expound upon the core of the matter as gorgeously as Pecknold does simply are not general issue. In my own listening experience, Fleet Foxes are most reminiscent of R.E.M. when they first appeared on the scene emitting a radio-friendly dream state. During the 1960s, of course, this sort of thing happened far more often.

But there was magic in the air in those days, and people were desperate for change. Today, given the splintered and angry nature of pop culture, and the corporate-generated information we’re strafed with on a daily basis, truly sweeping acceptance of a band like Fleet Foxes is an impossibility. This fissure, though, leaves a significant swathe of the public hungry for someone to shine a light so they can determine for themselves that hope really does lie beyond the gathering darkness. And, whether he likes it or not, Pecknold is holding a torch.

This may sound strange, but I feel protective of Pecknold in a way. At a time when ironic distance and machine-tooled soullessness rules, there’s bravery and immense spirit in his writing. He’s not afraid to reveal his commitment to living in a more open-hearted world at a time when that’s exactly what all of us need.

I know this isn’t the position most listeners would take, and it may seem ridiculous at first, but Pecknold reminds me a great deal of the early, beach bum incarnation of Bruce Springsteen. I don’t mean in the details of his music (don’t look for this guy to list Gary U.S. Bonds and the Shirelles as major influences) but in his roots-specific persona and his unwavering conviction in both community and the concept that we can be relieved of at least some of our existential weight through the fulcrum of music.

Just as you can hear the carnival nightlife of the Jersey shore and sense Springsteen’s understanding of his place in the evolution of the music he grew up listening to, Pecknold conveys the open air and sea spray of his Washington state upbringing while extracting energy from the same invisible lightning that’s driven folk musicians for hundreds of years. It’ll be fascinating to watch how he develops as an artist over time.

I can’t picture him coked-up and tumbling out of a limo any more than I ever imagined Springsteen doing it. Pecknold pretty obviously realizes there’s more reward to having a clarion voice than that.

DOWNLOAD: “Helplessness Blues” (2011), the second consecutive pop masterpiece from Fleet Foxes. Don’t go picking individual tracks and ignoring the rest— this is an album, and should be experienced as one.

Paul Tatara