Forget about sophomore slumps. Fleet Foxes’ second album, “Helplessness Blues,” lives up to the expectations of the band’s critically acclaimed debut album with a collection of gorgeous indie-folk songs that wrestle with heartbreak and existential questions about life and purpose.
That’s not to say the album came easy. During the three years between the release of its first album and “Helplessness Blues,” Fleet Foxes toured heavily while lead singer Robin Pecknold agonized over every detail of the new record, scrapping early recordings in his determination to make an album that would live up to expectations. The obsessive tinkering and self-doubt eventually led Pecknold’s girlfriend to break up with him.
His meticulousness paid off. The album is full of beautiful songs that recall the 1960s-era folk of Simon & Garfunkel and Fairport Convention, complete with echoed multi-part harmonies, melodies that border on the medieval and references to Yeats’ utopian Lake Isle of Innisfree.
While the band sticks to its signature sound, it shows growth by experimenting with more personal lyrics and longer song formats that effortlessly twist and transform.
“Sim Sala Bim” shows off Pecknold’s ability to lyrically transport the listener to a specific time and place. While a lone acoustic guitar chimes, he describes the visions of a dream: “He was so kind, such a gentleman tied to the Oceanside / Lighting a match on the suitcase’s latch in the fading night / Ruffled the fur of the collie “˜neath the table.” As if to mirror the feeling of being suddenly awoken from this peaceful dream, the music suddenly picks up, ending in spirited guitar strumming and tambourine banging.
“The Plains/Bitter Dancer” is the first of several multi-part epics and one of many songs that seem to address Pecknold’s breakup. Layers of oohs and ahhs slowly build into a wall of sound before silence suddenly falls as the song enters its second part. When the first words are finally sung it’s not Pecknold’s voice, but that of drummer J. Tillman, a musician with several solo releases of his own, that is strongest.
Despite its more melancholy beginning, the song ends on an almost jubilant note with the band singing, “At arm’s length, I will hold you there,” as if Pecknold is happy to finally be free of memory of the girl he once loved.
“The Cascades,” meanwhile, is a stunning instrumental interlude that sounds like it would be the perfect soundtrack for Ken Burns’ next documentary or a movie about American pioneers struggling through the wilderness on their way out West.
It is followed by the more upbeat “Lorelai.” Combining Caribbean inflected guitars and a waltz beat, the bouncy tone belies Pecknold’s brooding lyrics about a couple growing slowly, painfully apart.
Fleet Foxes is at its most experimental on the four-part opus, “The Shrine/An Argument.” Chronicling the emotional climax of a painful breakup, Pecknold allows his normally smooth voice to fray as he shouts the high notes. “When you talk you hardly even look in my eyes,” he pleads as the tension builds to a sudden, stark silence that somehow manages to still ring in one’s ears.
That silence is broken by a blast of discordant horns that is probably meant to represent the argument mentioned in the song’s title but instead comes off sounding like a very angry gaggle of geese. It may be artsy and symbolic, but it’s completely jarring in between the 11 other gorgeous songs.
The band quickly redeems itself with its last song, album highlight “Grown Ocean.” Combining surf guitar with echoing multi-layered harmonies, it readily evokes the sound of the ’60s California surf rock of The Beach Boys.
With the gorgeous “Helplessness Blues,” Fleet Foxes firmly establishes itself as one of the leading indie bands of the decade. Unfortunately for the band, that means one thing: expectations will be even higher for its next outing.
““ Madeleine Clare Flynn
Email Flynn at mflynn@media.ucla.edu.