Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold says he's 'scared to death' of Wellington

Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold (far left) says a Renata Adler book inspired him to rethink his songwriting. Photo / supplied

In January 2012, Fleet Foxes played two New Zealand shows – one in Wellington, one in Auckland. Lead singer Robin Pecknold says they were "some of our favourite shows we've ever done" – save for the pure terror of arriving in the capital city.

"I just remember, in Wellington, the approach to the airport was incredibly windy – oh my god, that scared me to death," says Pecknold. "I'm actually not looking forward to flying into Wellington by any means, but I'm really excited to be there."

Six years later, Fleet Foxes are returning to New Zealand in January to tour their third album, Crack-Up, released in June this year after a five-year hiatus. In that time, Pecknold enrolled in an undergraduate programme at Columbia University in New York, studying literature and the humanities; distracting himself from music, Pecknold put all his energy into learning.

Moving through his 20s in a somewhat reversed order to the norm – success first, study later – was an introspective experience. "It's harder to make friends as you get older," says Pecknold. "Sometimes there's an ulterior motive revealed in a friendship that isn't there when you're 15. Friendship's weird."

After linking up again in 2016, the members of Fleet Foxes began to work on new material, with Pecknold ensuring he worked more collaboratively with his bandmates than before. The resulting record is sprawling and ambitious, with more linear songs that often change direction and morph into different sounds. Pecknold's interest in literature is evident throughout (the title references an essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald), most obviously in the structure-defying songwriting.

"There's this book called Speedboat by Renata Adler that I read during the break, and it was just a series of impressionistic paragraphs, and you have to piece the story together yourself. It's told out of order," says Pecknold. "That was interesting and inspiring – it made me feel like I could treat the song parts that I had in a similar way, or look at them in a similar sense.

"Writing songs for me is always writing little snippets of music and not a full song all at once. I was just letting the mix piece together in a more filmic or narrative way, or a more visual way than just thinking chorus, verse, chorus."

Crack-Up certainly reaches for a cinematic grandeur – but Pecknold is hesitant to claim this as a kind of innovation. "I feel like most movies are pretty boring," he says. "Once you've seen enough movies and you start to see the structure behind them, and you can telegraph every plot twist or every narrative beat, that can get, you know – do you need to see the next Marvel movie?"

He pauses, rethinks. "If it's enjoyable then that's cool. But certain things I just find boring. It's tough too, because those ways of spicing it up, or making it different, are just as old or just as codified sometimes."

Touring as Fleet Foxes for the first time in five years finds Pecknold returning to old songs with a fresh pair of eyes. New songs are weaved into old songs, while certain tracks have been rehashed and updated for the new show. "There's a lot of 25 to 30-minute stretches of the set where we don't stop playing music, and it's songs from all three records," he says.

"There's a song on the second album where one of the lines is 'Oh man what I used to be'. And now, instead of that reminding me of the five years or 10 years before writing that song, it reminds me of that song itself being written five years ago."

Fleet Foxes: "It's harder to make friends as you get older". Photo / supplied

Five years ago, the music industry looked very different. After such a long break, Fleet Foxes faced the daunting task of returning to a world that had now fully embraced streaming and playlists, changing the way songs are written and albums are constructed.

But Pecknold wasn't thinking about that. "Maybe this is the wrong perspective to have, but I've always felt like I just need to work on the music, and then whatever happens after that, come what may," he says.

"Maybe I should think about how to optimise our streaming results more – maybe for the next album it'll be 30-second songs or something."

LOWDOWN:
Who: Fleet Foxes
When: January 11
Where: Powerstation