Fleet Foxes: Crack-Up Review

I think this was inevitable. Robin Pecknold went to college and came out an academic. What else is there to do but make complex compositions, challenging melodies, and motifs that rub against each other like burlap? It's the mid-career turnaround: fill your head with education or confidence and act like your fans are either brilliant like you or just not yet on your level. We've seen it so many times before: Radiohead, The Killers (hah didn't see that comparison did you?), Bon Iver.

I'm being mean to serve my purpose. The truth is, sometimes there's just no more to be wrung from the towel. I have to imagine there's some level of panic for bands that realize they've come to this point. They survived the sophomore slump only to discover not having ideas might be better than hating any that come along. And not everyone can be Beck.

There's lots of good news to go around: Pecknold was clearly inspired, Fleet Foxes didn't lose their mood, and the professors can pat themselves on the back for molding a mind to pay attention to the structure of music.There's no doubt about it: this is an educated album. It's a great album. It's a Fleet Foxes album.

It's a letdown.

Pecknold has put together an album like a woodworker puts together a chair: all the tools have been well sharpened, the grain all runs the same way, the linseed oil has been properly applied to sanded, sprayed, and resanded surfaces. And now all I want to do is admire all the wonderful craftsmanship on display. Here, that means appreciating each song for the sum of its parts. Taking the first track for example, it's just nice to listen to the harmonies, nod along with the jangly strummed strings, and opening your ears when everything stops for Pecknold to whisper a line before returning to expansive walls of sound.

One of the hallmarks of the band so far is their magic trick: making digital sound analog. Electric guitars etc are used, but they just don't ever register as being from such a modern era when surrounded by such ancient music. That breaks down a little more here, but it serves the intentions of the album. Cassius has more obvious reliance on....listen, I don't know what it is. Maybe an oscilloscope. The following track moves back to their familiar instruments, but it brings an alien melody and modernish drumming. 

Those alien melodies can be matched up with their signature harmonies every single time and they'll still sound alien on this album. That's with intention, again, I'm sure. It plays like a deconstruction of their previous albums, ripping out instruments and reassembling them into tapestries. There is plucky guitar over here, but it's not really playing a melody as much as it's just here to add a plucking noise. This piano? It's going to play chords, but with multiple cadences crashing together like waves. Hey, it fits the lyrics.

The lyrics are no slouch either, although you'd be forgiven for not humming them at work. There's not much of a pattern past reading like prose. Most everything is packed with philosophy, whether that's 12 lines, 120 lines, or 8 lines stretched so thin they sound more like instruments than words. The themes are largely classical as well: love, life, meaning, all the stuff you will likely be seeing on the midterms.

Pecknold is not about to let his degree go to waste. There's more than one word I am not remotely ashamed to have to look up. I get the feeling Pecknold wouldn't be irritated by slang words since they're as interesting as the dead words he dredges up here. Do you know what phillippic means? How about the Norwegian character Ylajali from the 1890 novel Sult? Appomattox? It may get his message across in the manner he desires, but he's all too excited to smugly drop a reference that undermines his attempt to sound like a grown-up.

Naiads is probably my favorite of the songs in terms of lyrics, presenting the best observations of the lot. Fire can't doubt its heat, water can't doubt its power. You're not adrift, you're not a gift, you know you're not a flower. In the context of the music presented, this derision-laced set of lines comes off as hypocritical, almost, but Pecknold is elsewhere unafraid to speak shamefully of himself as well.

Musically, there's still very much to appreciate, even if you're not a fan of the quasi-orchestral numbers. Naiads falls into this category, as does almost-americana uptempo track Third of May, which so far is about as lively and rock-forward as the group has ever been. It comes as a breath of fresh air after all the pontificating you have to wade through to get to it. It isn't until Fool's Errand that we get another moody crooner sing-along song, and it's as welcome as Third of May.

This is my real gripe with the album: why do we have to work so hard to enjoy this as much as Helplessness Blues? This is absolutely good! It's technically impressive, appropriately thematic, well researched music. But in putting all of that pressure on it, the music has lost so much soul. I don't feel like it's gained nearly as much as it lost to get to this point either. In those fleeting moments where I feel the urge to belt the lines along with the Foxes, I'm reminded of just how effortlessly philosophical the group already is. If I had an orchard, I'd work til I'm sore, and you would wait tables and soon run the store. Why is that any less evocative of the human spirit than God above saw, ever in the mind Blue and white irises in a line, Under your nameless shame I left you in frame, and you rose to be ossified?

It's the comparison that hurts. Had Fleet Foxes never released their first two albums, nobody would call them out for being pretentious. I can't remove their history from my experience, though. At the same time, if I were in their position, I may have done the same thing. Helplessness was already a companion album to their debut. How many times have we seen a director cash grab with a poorly conceived sequel to their one-off masterpiece? Jurassic Park needed no sequel, and Helplessness doesn't either. Their time in actual folk music is up, and it's about time I accept that for the blessing that it is.

That doesn't mean I won't be bitter. I love what Fleet Foxes has made here. It's a technical marvel. It is a perfect chair made by a detail oriented craftsman. But for all the work it puts in to be meaningful, a work of art, it's just a little too hard to see it as more than a chair.

7.5/10, Vinylworthy