Fanning the Fleet Foxes Flames

Call me an elitist, and I probably am, but I hate hype. Once something reaches a certain level of hype, with everyone exclaiming how amazingly awesome it is, I become predisposed to hate it for its sheer popularity. Plus, after a certain plateau of fawning, nothing can really live up to all the gushing, glowing praise, and then I'm invariably confused and disappointed with what exactly people thought was so great about it. So I maybe didn't want to like Fleet Foxes, or was fairly skeptical after the things I'd heard, but one listen convinced me that here, at last, was an album that deserved all the praise it's received – and more.

Fleet Foxes are a five-man band from Seattle, who are currently signed with Sub Pop. They've been around since 2006, but their debut album was released in June 2008, which Rolling Stone and Pitchfork both wet their pants over, fueling the musical frenzy. They've played at SXSW and Sasquatch in 2008 already, and I am super-stoked to be seeing them next week at Seattle's Capitol Hill Block Party.

They describe their music as "baroque harmonic pop jams," which is true as far as it goes, but it's also fair to mention their folky acoustic guitar; big booming drums; layered, echoing, harmonizing vocals; and spacious, hazy, ambient overall sound. Oh, and their quirky lyrics, which range from Decemberist-esque macabre folk ballads to fairy-tale imagery ("I was following the pack/all swallowed in their coats/with scarves of red tied ’round their throats/to keep their little heads/from fallin’ in the snow/And I turned ’round and there you go/And, Michael, you would fall/and turn the white snow red as strawberries/in the summertime"), and, while not always accessible, are always intriguing and vivid. As influences, they cite Crosby, Stills, and Nash; the Beach Boys; the Zombies; Joni Mitchell; and Simon and Garfunkel, which all clearly leave their audible mark on the Fleet Foxes' folky, dreamy, wistful sound.

In a profile that appeared in The Stranger, Fleet Foxes claimed not only to be non-hippies but vigorously anti-hippie. But you can't help feeling an exuberant, outdoorsy, canopy-of-trees joy in their more upbeat songs. "White Winter Hymnal" in particular sounds like it might have been recorded in a forest clearing, with hazy sunbeams frolicking to the beat. "Ragged Wood," with its lyrics about mountains and springtime and chorus of "whoa-ohhhs," captures the bigness and expanse of the outdoors and distills it into incredibly catchy, infectiously happy pop. Please note that I am hardly a fan of the actual outdoors, but this bouncy, joyously upbeat music seems to distill and concentrate the simple, unfussy beauty of nature in summertime – a very hippie-ish notion, it's true.

Not to say they can't take a turn for the darker now and then. "Your Protector" is a solemn, melancholy fable that starts out lugubriously slow, and features the sinister-sounding chorus "You run with the devil." But even this song is gorgeously lush and beautiful to listen to. Fleet Foxes can do no wrong!

I realize that I'm merely adding to the hype by talking the album up so much, but there you go – I have to do it. If it gets you to buy this album, then my goal is accomplished. Fleet Foxes will pitter-patter into your heart with astonishing speed, whether you're hippie-friendly or not.

1. Sun it Rises 3:13
2. White Winter Hymnal 2:29
3. Ragged Wood 5:09
4. Tiger Mountain Peasant Song 3:31
5. Quiet Houses 3:34
6. He Doesn't Know Why 3:22
7. Heard Them Stirring 3:04
8. Your Protector 4:11
9. Meadowlarks 3:13
10. Blue Ridge Mountains 4:27
11. Oliver James 3:23