By Lavinia Jones Wright
 |
Fleet Foxes |
|
Though 70s throwback music seems to be rushing back into style with West Coast folkers like Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart suggesting simpler times and natural beauty in their psychedelic refrains, few would have believed that the biggest buzz band of 2008 would be a soft-spoken five-piece from the windy Pacific North west donning battered thrift store attire and spinning wintry mountain hymns. But with little more than a dozen homespun recordings and complex and stunning vocal harmonies, Seattle's Fleet Foxes became one of 2008's biggest success stories.
Helmed by the angelic-voiced 21-year-old Robin Pecknold, Fleet Foxes' history dates back to Lake Washington High School in Seattle, where Pecknold and best friend Skyler Skjelset played guitar together and bonded over their mutual love of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Hank Williams. Developing their aesthetic early on, Pecknold chose the name Fleet Foxes because of the refined and old-fashioned images it evoked.
Seattle Producer Phil Ek spotted Fleet Foxes' potential in 2006 and helped them to record a self-titled EP, which would catapult the young band onto the radar of the local press. With virtually no budget, Fleet Foxes began recording a full-length in 2007 in band members' apartments, eventually signing to Sub Pop at the start of 2008 and heading out onto their first serious tour.
An afternoon appearance at SXSW in which Pecknold and crew serenaded a tightly-packed and utterly rapt industry filled crowd cemented the buzz growing around the band and the national and international music press took note. Sub Pop released the Sun Giant EP in the spring of 2008 and quickly followed it with the finished self-titled full-length in June. Critics, drawing comparisons to the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills & Nash, instantly loved the album.
While the influence of Neil Young's folk rock and the haunting harmonies of Brian Wilson are easily identified in Fleet Foxes, the originality of the band's sound trumps any connection that could be made between it and the music of the 1960s and 70s. In fact, the careful use of influence without any trace of imitation has proved that rather than some sense of nostalgia or familiarity, Fleet Foxes' success belongs to Pecknold's writing talents and to the group's live show.
Fleet Foxes' 2008 eponymous debut has come to define baroque harmonic pop, a genre that didn't even exist before they did, but which is now an essential part of the rock 'n' roll vocabulary.
