If you take any interest in contemporary popular music, you probably heard of Fleet Foxes at least a year ago. Apparently, their self-titled debut album won rave reviews and appeared in a lot of year-end 'Best of...' polls last year. If you're from their native Seattle, you might have been following them for 3 or 4 years now.
But for me, living in the cultural isolation of China, they are a new discovery - and I would still be in ignorance of them if the invaluable JES had not introduced them to me in this post last Friday (do check that post out for another of their songs and a couple of brilliant excerpted reviews).
I'm not sure how much I love them. I find most of their lyrics a bit too determinedly opaque for my taste, and their unique 'sound' does begin to pall after a while. Then again, maybe I've just overdosed on them a bit these past few days. They are clearly a very talented and innovative bunch of musicians, and they are creating something that is quite out of the ordinary. I'd expect them to be not just a short-term vogue, but a major force in contemporary music.
YouTube user neutrinoo appears to have posted the whole of their first album (sound only), if you want to sample more. Harder to find, there were also a couple of EPs - Fleet Foxes and Sun Giant - prior to the album. Quite a lot of live performance clips are starting to appear too, but the only other actual video I've been able to find is for this song, Mykonos. They've been so busy touring for the past couple of years that a second album keeps getting put back, but there should be one out around the middle of next year.
However, of all the stuff of theirs I've listened to in the last five days, it's the song above, White Winter Hymnal, that I just can't get out of my head at the moment: the music (and the video) are quite mesmerising.
(Caution: If you attend to the lyrics, it's not nearly such a pretty little song as it sounds. If Brian Wilson had chosen to write something about a teenage gang slaying, this might have been it.)
But for me, living in the cultural isolation of China, they are a new discovery - and I would still be in ignorance of them if the invaluable JES had not introduced them to me in this post last Friday (do check that post out for another of their songs and a couple of brilliant excerpted reviews).
I'm not sure how much I love them. I find most of their lyrics a bit too determinedly opaque for my taste, and their unique 'sound' does begin to pall after a while. Then again, maybe I've just overdosed on them a bit these past few days. They are clearly a very talented and innovative bunch of musicians, and they are creating something that is quite out of the ordinary. I'd expect them to be not just a short-term vogue, but a major force in contemporary music.
YouTube user neutrinoo appears to have posted the whole of their first album (sound only), if you want to sample more. Harder to find, there were also a couple of EPs - Fleet Foxes and Sun Giant - prior to the album. Quite a lot of live performance clips are starting to appear too, but the only other actual video I've been able to find is for this song, Mykonos. They've been so busy touring for the past couple of years that a second album keeps getting put back, but there should be one out around the middle of next year.
However, of all the stuff of theirs I've listened to in the last five days, it's the song above, White Winter Hymnal, that I just can't get out of my head at the moment: the music (and the video) are quite mesmerising.
(Caution: If you attend to the lyrics, it's not nearly such a pretty little song as it sounds. If Brian Wilson had chosen to write something about a teenage gang slaying, this might have been it.)
4 comments:
Oh gosh, yeah -- when I first saw (and heard) the White Winter Hymnal I about fell over backwards. I'm still trying to make out if the rippling streams are actual water or, like the rest of the video, some sort of stop-motion effect -- and if the latter, what exactly is the thing or material being stop-moved (?).
The Brian Wilson/gang slaying wrap-up line is brilliant.
There've been numerous books on the subject of rock lyrics as poetry (or not). Usually they cite Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and so on, and Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" qualifies depending on how finely you've set your filter, and so on. But for the most part, I think rock lyrics (including Dylan's, Cohen's, etc.) are most "meaningful" and poetic when you don't read them too intently but just sort of keep your mind a-squint, so the semantic edges are blurred. Fleet Foxes' stuff works very well on that level.
I am a sceptic about the 'poetic' worth of Dylan and Cohen, though I like their music if you don't take it that seriously.
I tend to write about music more often over on The Barstool, where I have often professed my adulation of Tom Waits. I think he's the only singer-songwriter I've come across whose lyrics pretty consistently impress when read on the page, without the benefit of the music.
Now you've brought it to my attention, I've been puzzling over how they do that effect too. I'm pretty sure it's not water. I suspect it's some kind of gloopy plastic that doesn't move much under its own weight but can be easily agitated or rippled by outside force.
It's the melting snow that gets me. I guess that's probably just a 'reverse time' shot where they run the snow sprinkiling backwards, but it's very well done.
Yikes - another telling typo in that last comment!
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