Day 2 - Off and Running
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Looking over my collection, I confirmed that for most of the artists I listen to, I prefer their second record to their first. Dylan, The Band, Iron & Wine, The Mars Volta, Coheed, My Morning Jacket, all of their sophomore efforts if not entirely blow it out of the water, at least top their debuts in some ways. I've always thought that some artists tend to do a bit too much imitation on their first records, maybe out of fear of failure from venturing too far or subconsciously trying to ensure success by sticking with what works. By their second, they're a little more comfortable in their own skin, they've played a couple hundred more shows together, and they're willing to change it up a bit and try things they aren't sure how they'll work out.
Fleet Foxes stormed on the scene in 2008 with their self-titled. It ended up at or near the top on most year-end lists and even now stands as a truly remarkable folk-rock record, one that sounds of a very particular bygone time and place. I've always pictured, like, pioneers singing most of its tracks. But it was maybe a little too pretty for its time, too anachronistic. By spring 2011, they followed up with this album, Helplessness Blues, which retained a lot of their multi-part vocal harmonies and arrangement choices but truly sounded part of its time and place. For me, anyway. I was an anxious 22-year-old nearing the end of my time at university and entirely unsure of what came next. The title track seemed to speak to the entire generation's malaise and lack of optimism, graduating into a world where sub-prime mortgage lenders and "men in dimly lit halls who determine my future for me" had seemingly robbed us of much of one. Musically, the band experimented with different song structures, sometimes ending a song way before you would expect and sometimes adding a saxophone freakout to the end of an eight-minute freak-folk masterpiece. Lead singer Robin Pecknold mentioned Van Morrison's
Astral Weeks and Roy Harper's
Stormcock as large influences when he was writing this album, which soon led me to those records, too. (As was often the case before streaming, and being on a limited student budget who could only afford or justify so many CDs, artist recommendations was mostly how I got exposed to and learned about new music.) The songs flow and amble like Van's and Roy's, and you can especially hear Roy's distinct guitar sound all over the album. Eight years later, this still stands as one of my favourite albums and one of the best of the decade, in my opinion.
