ecce Vulpes- Fleet Foxes Release A New Album

Today marks the long-awaited release for Fleet Foxes second album Helplessness Blues, as well as the beginning of a tour that will last almost uninterrupted through August and take them across North America and Europe.  Although I’m not generally a huge fan of their sort of wide-eyed enthusiasm there is certainly something catchy about their melodies, and only a fool would deny the care they put into crafting their harmonies.  While Brian Wilson and Crosby, Stills and Nash are often invoked when describing, I find their sound akin to Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree (in that I think their music can sound like it was written in cult compound), not to mention My Morning Jacket:

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I also find something Prog-y in their harmony constructions, similar to what we hear in the Your Move section of “I See All Good People”:

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That one might be a stretch, but regardless of their cult sound tendencies or perhaps sounding (and even looking) like MMJ’s little brother, the songs on Helplessness Blues are essentially sentimental.  The obvious care taken in arranging, as well as the vaguely stilted language in which the lyrics are written only lend more value to the Simon-&-Garfunkel-esque earnestness and sincerity of the songs and general likability of the effort (it also makes them sound alittle like they were written by an adolescent trying really hard to impress a girl he likes, which is also very sweet).  For all the press they’ve gotten regarding their mature sound, Fleet Foxes are really writing love hymns for young people who may or may not have ever lived with their significant other; indeed I imagine this album will become the soundtrack to the coital rustlings of many a summer tryst, of love’s first bloom.  And they said they weren’t hippies…

Of course, I’m already sick of the song “Helplessness Blues” and dread the long future I foresee in which I encounter this song on countless movie soundtracks and Volkswagen commercials.