Fleet Foxes

Fleet Foxes are the once and future kings of the currently thriving "bearded indie folk" music scene (along with the likes of Iron & Wine, Bon Iver and Sea Wolf), and there's a good reason for that. In addition to the heaps of accolades from indie music gatekeepers like Pitchfork (who picked this record and its prequel EP "Sun Giant" as the best of 2008),there's the music itself - at once timeless and thoroughly contemporary. Rare is the band that can deliver compositions which seem to have been dredged up from some lost archive of American musical history (the classic example being the debut record from The Band), but the songs on this record could as easily have come from 1800s Appalachia as from Seattle in the 2000's.

Shimmering, echoey harmonies combined with delicately eclectic instrumentation, and lyrical imagery that conjures up everything from Edward Gorey illustrations ("White Winter Hymnal" with its line about "following the pack all swallowed in their coats/ with scarves of red tied round their throats/ to keep their little heads/ from falling in the snow...") to sun-drenched California beaches. That's Fleet Foxes - easily one of the most accomplished and beautiful releases of the past year.

Beautiful haunting songs from an Appalachia in some alternate universe. I've been listening to this for a few weeks now and it's still growing on me.

This is one of the most original albums I've heard over the last several years. Earthy folk ballads suffused with choir sound gives this album an Edenic feel. Many tracks sound like lush soundtracks accompanying a sojourn through green shimmering glades. But this music is not precious. It's earthy and feels authentic and never pretentious.

I don't read a lot of music reviews, but I have to assume Fleet Foxes have been compared to a band with a similar sensibility and sound--My Morning Jacket.

Those who like the Fleet Foxes might look to these bands: Rosebuds, Midlake, Marjorie Fair, and the Innocence Mission.

So I was very excited to get this album. Previewing the tracks and reading all the great reviews it had to be a winner. But after listening through the album only a couple times I'm already tired of it. I have to say they did a great job but it's an album that you listen to every once in a while for me.

This young band is wonderful. I've listened to this CD twice and it just keeps getting better time I listen to it.