Growing up sucks. You start to question everything you thought you knew for sure, and your morals and convictions slip away, replaced instead by tired resignation. And then comes the inevitable existential crisis, wondering who exactly you are and whether you can really even define a solid sense of self when it seems like everything, including you, never stops changing.
Fleet Foxes gets it. On its latest album, Helplessness Blues, the band explores contemplative lyrical territory, asking what exactly it means to get older.
But don’t go thinking this is some sort of emo-tastic bullcrap you’d be ashamed to put on your iPod. The band serves up an existential crisis over a bed of baroque folk and deceptively lovely melodies. What makes Helplessness Blues work is its sense of balance, alternating between the nakedness of bare vocals to full melodies that surprise you with their lushness.
Fleet Foxes have a keen sense of what makes an album. Sure, we all love the singles: the jaunty folk feel of opener “Battery Kinsie” and the slow-building intensity of “Helplessness Blues.” But the songs mean more in the context of the album as a whole — in part because the timing and placement of each track is impeccable.
The rusty violin and flirtatious melody of “Bedouin Dress” drop back to the stripped-down “Blue Spotted Tail,” which then yields to the instrumental “The Cascades,” with its steady vacillation between vague guitar noodling and intentional intensity.
Next up is “Grown Ocean,” whose first few seconds sound all the world like Fleet Foxes is gearing up to cover “Paint it Black” — that is, until the song surges into the stardust-sprinkled gypsy folk the band does so well.
Near the album’s end, things start getting experimental. “The Plains/Bitter Dancer” begins with methodical droplets of sound that eventually fall together into a measured yet consistent stream. The song transitions into the tribal, organic fingerpicking of an acoustic guitar.
The next track, the smoky and sinister “The Shrine/An Argument,” has a strange, angular melody that descends into a messy, squealing horn solo like the angry shrieking of seagulls.
“Someone You’d Admire” is a fitting end to the album. “After all is said and done, I feel the same / All that I hoped would change within me stayed,” Robin Pecknold sings with troubled acceptance. He continues his attempt to discern his identity with the poignant closing lines: “”One of them wants only to be someone you admire / One would as soon just throw you on the fire / After all is said and after all is done / God only knows which of them I’ll become.”
It’s the catch-22 of the existential crisis. Even though everything’s changing, even though you’re not quite sure who you are, it seems like everything you wanted to be is a mirage you could spend the rest of your life trying to convince yourself is real. What actually remains is your essential nature, in all its messy imperfection.
