The Fleet Foxes' debut album made the band one of the most feted of the era with their folky harmonies, and now it's follow-up time. Frontman Robin Pecknold talks to Scott Kara
Robin Pecknold is not a jump-for-joy kind of guy. He's more of a bashful grin-of-delight type, which is probably more in keeping with his band Fleet Foxes' folky pastoral pop.
Pecknold and his bandmates certainly weren't leaping in the air in 2008 when their self-titled debut topped most annual best-of lists (including TimeOut's) and made them the universal choice for band of the year. It wasn't a bad achievement considering Pecknold and his high school friend, guitarist and mandolin player Skye Skjelset had formed the group in the mid 2000s and had been quietly plying their trade out of Seattle.
But, to be honest, they were a little spooked by their swift rise in popularity.
"It wasn't like, 'hooray ...'," says Pecknold, holed up in a little room at the Sub Pop Records offices in Seattle. "It was just kind of confusing more than anything else. It was definitely an experience that was unexpected and weird and put us in this place that we never expected to be in in our lives - and I think it spooked us a little bit.
"But it definitely changed everything about our life and it determined what was to come - so that's kind of crazy."
You see, Fleet Foxes, also made up of drummer Josh Tillman, bass player Christian Wargo, keyboardist Casey Wescott, and multi-instrumentalist Morgan Henderson, would have been more than happy with doing one tour, "maybe recording another album", or, laughs Pecknold, "going into the peace corps or something". Instead they were obliged to tour a lot and then come up with a follow-up album.
Not that they were in any hurry to finish new album Helplessness Blues, which is out on Monday, because they figured the longer they took to do it the longer they would be out of the spotlight.
"It meant time away from all the crazy busy stuff we would have to do when we put out the record," says Pecknold with a quiet chuckle.
Although he admits recording had its fraught moments and probably took longer than they expected due to many things including illness, rewriting songs, writing new songs, and "creative doubt".
Late in 2009 Pecknold hit upon a creative turning point when he was asked to go on tour with harp-playing songstress Joanna Newsom ("As a huge fan of hers I was very honoured") and he realised he had to write some new songs that he could play by himself. This refocused his songwriting, because before that he was writing what he calls "non-songwriter-type" songs that were devoid of lyrics and vocal melodies.
These less structured songs are still conspicuous on Helplessness Blues, with the soundtrack-influenced tranquillity of The Cascades and the free jazz folk weirdness at the end of An Argument. However, Pecknold is at his singer-songwriting best on tracks like Sim Sala Bim, a great little yarn inspired by an "old sea dog" from Big Sur on the Californian coast who runs a library dedicated to author Henry Miller, the toe-tapping, fiddle-driven porch ditty Bedouin Dress, and the title track, which builds from a simple acoustic blues into something elegant and grand.
While Fleet Foxes' first album was pastoral folk, this time round it's more like prog folk coming together with country and psychedelic pop. Once again Pecknold was inspired by the likes of Bob Dylan and Neil Young but also Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, with the "raw emotion ... and trance-like nature of the arrangements", and in its more transcendent moments, such as multi-part epics Plains/Bitter Dancer and The Shrine/An Argument, Helplessness Blues channels Brian Wilson's mad genius on SMiLE.
"I think it was about wanting to experiment with structure and I like it when things shift on a dime to something else like SMiLE did, which is always constantly shifting between these self-contained pieces of music and it just keeps me as a listener more engaged than, 'oh they're going back to the chorus now', or, 'oh, here comes the bridge'." The title track encapsulates the dominant theme of the album which, according to Pecknold, delves into "who you are and who you want to be". On it he questions "What's my name? What's my station?" and opener Montezuma - which includes the album's most beautiful lines, "gold teeth and gold jewellery, every piece of your dowry, throw them into the tomb with me, bury them with my name" - also picks up on the theme.
"I think I was thinking about creativity, and the relationship and difficulty between striving to create something and what you have to leave behind to commit yourself to that. And I was thinking about whether it ends up being worth it in the end, and even if it was the right choice in the first place."
But for all Pecknold's indecision the album is focused and like its predecessor it unfolds magically from the thrumming choirboy highs of beautiful highlight Bitter Dancer to the rousing finale of Grown Ocean.
It's clear he is the dominant force in the band but he believes he leaves the songs open to interpretation whereby the others can make their presence felt.
"There is not a lot of instruction as to what they [should play], and this is not an album I would release as a solo album, you know. So it's the songs that they like, and their opinions on what songs we do and the shape of the record is very important to the whole process. Even though I've written the songs so far, it would be a totally different thing if it was just my album."
And for the first time Fleet Foxes feels like a unified band because Tillman and Wargo didn't play on the first album (although they toured with the band). "So I think now we're in a place where it's like everybody that is involved is on the album and I think they felt weird taking credit for the [first] album when everybody said, 'hey, great work on the album', even though they did all the hard work touring. But Helplessness Blues definitely feels like something we were all part of, and something that we are all proud of."
Lowdown
Who: Robin Pecknold, leader and songwriter in Seattle folk band Fleet Foxes
What: Helplessness Blues, out Monday
Debut album: Fleet Foxes (2008)
- TimeOut
