“Is it still raining?” asked Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold as the Seattle sixpiece assembled onstage last night at a sold-out Stubb’s. Rain? Never heard of it.
More Pacific Northwest importers of wet sky, the Cave Singers were on the last song of its 40-minute opening set when lightning began demarcating a horizontal property line between the darkening heavens and a sunset-colored earth, bulbous drops of water pelting smiling faces turned upward. The trio, a Cave-like and unplugged Black Rebel Motorcycle Club as led by local mother trucker Scott H. Biram crossed with Joe Cocker, chanted its post-rockabilly beat blues into an honest to goodness flash of precipitation.
Fleet Foxes wasted little time assembling next. Double guitarists and multi-instrumentalists, plus bass and drums, the progressive folk favorites whipped onstage to an almost sea breeze and half moon, the group’s Beach Boys harmonies obviously agreeing with Mother Nature’s freshening welcome. By the third song, “Drop in the River,” that choral quenched a parched throng. Its rejoinder, “Battery Kinzie,” from the Foxes new sophomore LP, rang out like a Christian mass, missing only seasonal sleigh bells to complete the Christmas jangle.
Released last week, Helplessness Blues evolves Fleet Foxes forward like Pink Floyd’s jump from debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn to follow-up A Saucerful of Secrets – suites of sound over simple songcraft – but Pecknold’s penmanship still emerges with a sharp point, especially with a live performance to focus the material. Newbies “Bedouin Dress” and “Sim Sala Rim” back to back early on even put the song age into relief, the latter’s strum and thump egged on by fiery fiddle. If modern music’s moving past albums to the song, performances are eschewing greatest hits for LP swaths. Helplessness Blues highlighted the Foxes’ 80-minute main set last night at every point.
“White Winter Hymnal,” from the band’s 2008 debut, had the audience singing to the stars, but “Lorelai” next proved a new and enduring hook off Helplessness Blues. Double that for new disc lead-off “Montezuma,” whose indie cantata lopped heads before album-mate “Blue Spotted Tail” – both songs sandwiching “He Doesn’t Know Why” – set up a two-tune encore going out on the new title track. With “Helplessness Blues,” Fleet Foxes washed away any notion of a sophomore drought.
This article appears in May 6 • 2011.