duggup

Fleet Foxes is a five-piece Seattle based band they describe their music as “baroque harmonic pop jams” (I really like that as a description).

Their music has a heavy emphasis on harmony, simple three- and four-part block harmony. The songs are about friends and family, history, nature, and the things that surround them in the Pacific Northwest.

I love what they do with their songs, the interesting structural ideas, like whacking two songs together and presenting it as one piece, instead of using the ever reliable verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus verse chorus of most modern music they create songs with a narrative structure that totally avoids choruses and verses use rounds and instrumental sections to convey the story. Instrumentally they use guitars, mandolins, and other odds and sods but the draw here really is the vocals.

Now here is the bit where I have to pick a song that sums it all up for me. It’s too hard to do, head over www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes and have a listen to “English House” with it’s glorious guitar work and work from there.

Then head over to to Web In Front there is a podcast of the band playing a concert in Copenhagen last August. It’s about an hour long and it is just fabulous ( I have it playing in the background as I type this), I suggest you go grab a copy and just store it on your MP3 player.

Your next stop should be the ever reliable NPR Live Concerts feed, it also has a concert (and interview) from about two months earlier, this was where I first heard them and yes the concert is still on the MP3 player. Head to NPR and have a look.

Highly Recommended.

Websites at www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes and www.subpop.com/artists/fleet_foxes

Make sure you don’t miss “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” it’s a heartbreaker.

thatch is fascinated by guitars, music, guitars, production, silly noises, guitars and used to be a musician. Did I mention the thing about the guitars?
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