Never before have I seen so many checkered flannel shirts and beanies gathered in one place on a mild May evening in Los Angeles. Seattle-based band Fleet Foxes played to a packed Palladium Saturday, just a few days after the official release of its second studio album, “Helplessness Blues.”
Fellow Seattle-ites and facial hair aficionados The Cave Singers opened the show with drummer Marty Lund’s jungle beats and locomotive rhythms that guitarist Derek Fudesco’s tumbleweed hair rolled along to in the midst of harmonica, washboard and tambourine.
Lead singer and guitarist Pete Quirk’s gentle rasp of a voice, perhaps enhanced by the spliff and the Jameson he alluded to during some stage banter, cut through spouts of smoke emanating from the audience.
Fleet Foxes lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Robin Pecknold was welcomed to the stage with whistles and cries, only to quietly tune his guitar and warm up his voice, inaudible over the vinyl records a DJ was playing in the corner of the stage.
As Pecknold stood alone center stage in his sweater and beanie, closing his eyes as he sung unheard lyrics and strummed a silent guitar, one couldn’t help but detect what seemed like a hint of anxiety in him that was comfortingly human after all the fame he has achieved.
The adoring roar of the crowd as the rest of the band took the stage was loud enough to quell any insecurities, however.
“Good feeling in here,” Pecknold said in a suggestive tone, seemingly aware of his understatement in response to the cheering crowd.
The first notes of “Cascades” trickled off mandolin and guitar as the band crescendoed into “Grown Ocean,” both songs off of “Helplessness Blues.” The new album saw the addition of Morgan Henderson who filled out Fleet Foxes’ sound that night with flute, tambourine, upright bass and bass clarinet, among other instruments.
Dropping the tempo down with “Drops in the River,” the band continued to pepper its set with old songs off of its 2008 self-titled debut, much to the delight of the audience, who seemed to know all the words. Momentarily heavy bass and drum feedback gave way to the hair-raising harmonies that people had come to hear.
The very vocal crowd was a change from Fleet Foxes’ last Los Angeles show at the intimate El Rey Theatre in 2008, when people didn’t yet know all the lyrics to the now-popular songs.
At first, the sing-a-longs evoked a communal energy in songs such as “Mykonos” and “White Winter Hymnal,” as people turned to one another to sing “I love you, I love you, oh brother of mine” on “Blue Ridge Mountains.”
However, hearing the new material sans audience participation provided a refreshing break from the dissonance of thousands of competing voices and allowed the band to show off the vocal talent for which it is known.
Listeners had more of a chance to reflect on and appreciate the music itself rather than become lost in the social experience of the concert. Then again, there were also girlish screams of “Robin, I love you! Have my baby!” that made it seem like some people had mistaken the show for a Jonas Brothers concert.
One girl was courageous enough to ask Pecknold to come to her wedding that, after he asked when it was, she told him was “after you propose to me!”
Pecknold had been encouraging interpersonal communication throughout the evening ““ though his question of whether anyone in the audience had seen Ke$ha at the Palladium the night before evoked mainly confused silence and a few chuckles from his fans in flannel.
Pecknold also observed that the audience was pretty mild despite the fact that alcohol was being served at the venue. A sarcastic expletive was shouted in response from the audience, to which Pecknold grinned, “That’s more like it.”
The audience would not let the band stay off the stage, beckoning for an encore that consisted of a solo cover of Joan Baez’s “Silver Dagger” by Pecknold and the grand finale of “Helplessness Blues” that promised, “I’ll get back to you someday soon, you’ll see.”
Driving home, people’s windshields became wet with Los Angeles’ first rain in weeks, perhaps invoked by its saturation of Seattle sound that night.