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May 27th, 2011 1:00am

Gleaming White Just As I Recall

Fleet Foxes "Bedouin Dress"

Fleet Foxes make very pleasant music, but despite gesturing in the general direction of deeper ideas and some kind of spiritual resonance, I find their songs to be lacking in substance. I'm not complaining about that, really -- I don't get mad at candy for having no nutritional value, after all. The appeal of "Bedouin Dress" is purely musical, it totally crumbles the second I try to pay attention to the words, which are mainly neo-hippie drivel tossed in with a possible allusion to Yeats. The pleasure is in getting swept away in its breeziness and not thinking at all. It's beard folk bubblegum. Buy it from Amazon.

8 Responses.

5/27/11 2:05 am
Pedram says:

I’m totally with you on that. In fact, this “beard folk bubblegum” is ubiquitous to me throughout the album. I still haven’t been able to find a moment of pleasure in it. I don’t know where that 8.8 comes from.
5/27/11 3:46 am
Poses says:

My next question would be -what do you think of Donovan…
5/27/11 5:44 am
Matthew Perpetua says:

I adore “Sunshine Superman,” “Season of the Witch” and “Mellow Yellow.”
5/27/11 7:11 am
Bob K says:

I can’t for the life of me puzzle out where all the love for this album from the critics and many of my friends comes from. It sounds pretty great- Phil Ek production will get you that- but the lyrics are completely insufferable in a Conor-Oberstian way. I want to throttle this guy after the first three lines of the album!

The only song I like is the one that rips off Bob Dylan’s “Fourth Time Around” and the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood”.

That said, it’s probably a great album to listen to while knitting hats to sell on Etsy.
5/27/11 10:33 pm
mitya says:

I wlll third or fourth this sentiment. I keep thinking, “I need to listen closer, everybody loves these guys.” But I don’t find their melodies particularly… memorable. And the whole thing just sounds so brittle. It’s exactly like china — I’m happy to admire it for a couple of minutes in the shop, but i have absolutely zero interest in taking any of it home.
5/28/11 8:14 pm
Bob McMahon says:

I loved the first album but after two listens of Helplessness, I’m mostly with you guys on this one. This song is one of the better ones though. And I weirdly like the 8 minute one, which has a lot of stuff I normally hate in it.
5/29/11 10:44 pm
Steve Dunbar says:

I think that’s the biggest problem with Helplessness Blues: It meanders too much to be “bubblegum” music. I thought their first album was pretty great (nothing beyond that) because it was pretty concise and had some nice melodies; sure the new album is only ten minutes longer, but it feels like its a whole lot longer because the tunes just aren’t as catchy.
6/3/11 8:20 pm
Stephen H says:

First and foremost Fleet Foxes is one of my favorite bands out there today. I know a lot of you guys aren’t feeling/relating to his lyrics, but what wins me over is that I know he (Robin Pecknold) relates to the lyrics, which is what separates music from the radio.
I also enjoy, as Matt alluded to, the spiritual references Robin makes in his songs.
And before you give up on them, just go on their Vimeo page (which is done by Robin’s brother) and I think you will see that they really are artistic, just in a mid life crisis. Which everyone can relate to.

PTL