Nostalgic hippie ruralism and an air of mystery surround Fleet Foxes. James McNair tries to work out what makes the acclaimed new American band tick
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Six months ago, Fleet Foxes were just another aspiring band quietly plying their trade on MySpace. Now, they are 2008's must-hear act. Signed to Seattle's hip label Subpop in the United States, they have just released an eponymous debut album that was largely recorded in group leader Robin Pecknold's basement last November. Fleet Foxes has already been hailed as a modern "classic". That is, if a record that draws on English pastoral folk music and the sound of California dreaming can be described as such.
News started leaking out after this year's SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, where Fleet Foxes' guileless, openhearted music was the talk of the town.
"It's amazing, but it's kind of absurd, too," says Pecknold when quizzed about rave reviews of Fleet Foxes. "Regardless of what the critics say, I guess I'm always gonna think we're bad. The way music is disseminated nowadays, you could write one song, put it on your MySpace page, then a few weeks later everyone has written about you and you're gonna tour till you die. Disbelief is the only sane reaction. Until a few months ago, I'd never even been interviewed."
Pecknold's blue and black plaid shirt might peg him as coming from the Starbucks-loving birthplace of grunge, but this isn't information you'd intuit from listening to Fleet Foxes' music.
It's not that their linchpin doesn't own and appreciate albums by Nirvana and Mudhoney; more that the songs he writes tap into a more Arcadian vision not dissimilar to that played out on Midlake's magical 2006 album The Trials of Van Occupanther.
"Yeah, I can see that comparison," says the wan, twinkly-eyed songsmith, scratching at a beard Grizzly Adams would be proud of. "Although I live in the city, I don't live a city life. It would be dishonest of me to make music about partying all night at clubs, because I'm usually at home reading or playing guitar. I'm a fan of the great outdoors, and I think there's an element of uninformed nostalgia to what we do sometimes. I doubt if it would have been much fun to live in 15th-century England, though," he adds. "No proper bathrooms."
Fleet Foxes formed around the nucleus of Pecknold and guitarist Skye Skjelset while the two friends were at school. "My first impression of Robin?" asks the slight, fresh-faced Skjelset when quizzed separately. "That he was smart and funny and confident without really trying. He could have been the coolest kid in school but he wasn't interested in that."
"Skye was super-shy at school," offers Pecknold, by contrast. "He still is. I guess we were outsiders, just hanging out in science class. I hated high school."
Skjelset says the first original composition they played together was a prog rock-influenced nugget called "Tenement House". Back then, Fleet Foxes went by the moniker of Pineapple, but when a local punk band with the same name objected, Pecknold opted for Fleet Foxes because he thought it "evocative of some weird English activity like fox hunting".
He says Skjelset's "extremely cool" mother had a liking for Bob Dylan and Hank Williams that helped steer his and Skjelset's precocious good taste, but there were also trusted ears in the Pecknold household: Robin's elder sister, Aja, had been a rock critic for Seattle Weekly, while his father is a gifted multi-instrumentalist who played in the Seattle-based soul band The Fathoms in the 1960s.
Pecknold and Skjelset's shared Scandinavian lineage seems important to Fleet Foxes. Both men have or had Norwegian grandparents who settled in Seattle, whose salmon fishing once drew many Nordic emigres, and a Nordic darkness seems to have filtered down the gene pool to inform some of Fleet Foxes' more reflective moments.
But in person Pecknold is smiley and polite, the only small cloud on his horizon seemingly the challenges that touring might present for his strict vegan diet. He's fine on the music-making but more reticent when you try to lift the lid on his lyrics.
"I think it's good to be a bit enigmatic," says Pecknold, green eyes twinkling again. "It's fairly well documented that a lot of the songs are about close friends and family, but I don't want to give everything away, in the same way that I don't want to blog about what I do all day, either."
But all those people he mentions in his songs ... Who is Bob Valaas in the song of the same name, for example? "That's my Norwegian granddad. But that song was written for my elder brother Sean, really. We used to spend a lot of time together at this log cabin my granddad built at Plain, Washington State, back in the 1970s. I wrote some of the stuff on the album when I was out there late last year. When I'm on stage it's great for me to be able to sing a song that's about my brother."
There's also a churchy quality to the rich, rousing vocal-round that begins White Winter Hymnal, and some critics have picked up on the devotional sound that informs parts of Fleet Foxes' debut. It's easy to imagine the group bringing in the sheaves, but Pecknold is not a believer.
"My dad was quite critical of organised religion, so we kids were never scuttled out to church. I don't know if there is a Judeo-Christian god, but if there is, I wouldn't blame him for everything that's wrong in the world. I suppose music is a devotional vocation for me, and even if you're not religious that thing of aspiring to some kind of greatness can be a very useful tool. When you hear pure devotion, though like Brian Wilson aiming to honour God on Pet Sounds it's a lot more powerful than the average love song."
Rather than honouring God, Pecknold's songs seem to honour those closest to him. He describes his compositions as "happy accidents" and says that he is not particularly attached to them, something that surprises me, given their quality and personal nature.
While many young musicians who are admirers of The Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel et al succumb to pastiche, Pecknold is able to distil such influences into something related but fresh. But though others see him as a precociously gifted talent, he feels he is playing catch-up: "Bob Dylan was 20 when his first records came out, and Brian Wilson was 23 or 24 when he made Pet Sounds and Smile. Even back when I was 15 I was thinking, 'If I'm gonna get anywhere close to those guys, I have to start now'.
LOWDOWN
Who: Fleet Foxes
What: Harmonic pop-generating quintet from Seattle who are label mates with Flight of the Conchords
Debut album: Fleet Foxes, out now
"Independent
