Fleet Foxes
Sensation By Way Of Invisible Arms Entwined With Golden Voices That Shine Like Rivers
Apr 17, 2008
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Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound Engineering by Patrick Stolley
Prepare to not know where you are. Prepare to be completely yanked out of the casing, borders and firmament of your bones and prints. You will find yourself naked in the middle of a barren woods, or with a light covering of bedclothes flapping in the frosty, kick of a wind, looking sideways and likeways in all directions, rubbing the sleepy fog from your eyes and wondering what had just happened - how you got between a peaceful night in and a twisted version of your own personal bit of fantastic, perplexed carnivalesque solemnity. You'll not be frightened.
In fact, you'll be quite calm, wanting the sensation to continue without end for as long as it can go on. There's an immediate thought that one blink and it will disappear like a bubble or a ripple on the surface of a placid lake. You'll convince yourself to slow down your breathing, to retreat inside, to focus on not twitching or spooking the feeling that's come over you like a waterfall of light syrup, surrounding you in a cocoon that's as toasty as a hug. You'd move tentatively and with careful steps, if you did at all, as if you were sneaking up on a bunny rabbit or a less than tame kitten. Be ready for not having an iota of control over the operation - the details of what's about to happen and then once it's over, what did happen, aren't forthcoming nor will they be bulletined in a concise conclusion following your return to the ordinary times that were once all that you had in your quiver.
The Fleet Foxes don't make any sense like that, adhering to logic or anything that falls into a polished box with a bow. They are new light, a new winter, a new, olden cold that makes everyone sort of believe in warmth. They are those fucked up winter terrors that swoop in and kill all of cheeriness that we were hoping could sustain us through the end of the long, slushy, icy season that somehow are so nasty and demoralizing that they spawn a new formation of some unbeknownst resilience that will steel and invigorate. Sometimes those heavy colds are the ones that give a better reminder about the sinewy, buttery warmth that can and will once again be ours. The whole fondness makes the heart grow fonder mantra works here and the Seattle Foxes - a dashing decree of quite literally thousands of beautiful things - ooze fondness for gentle words, for airborne, luxuriant harmonies and for the blood of life. They'll make you melt all of the hardened corners off by doing nothing more than what they know, what they've always known. They are a declaration of a new, almost fabled construction of the essence of human spirit, should that spirit involve literate murder tales, lovable lovelorn notions and convincing real love for all of the finer attractions that a singing voice in an empty room (they're all cathedrals and holy places it feels when it comes to the Fleet Foxes) can convey. You might already be gone, to where they'll take you. It's not about the if, it's about the when of it all. Just take it all in and appreciate the things that Robin Pecknold can show you with his choir of accomplices. It's nothing short of breathtaking for those who make music the way that Fleet Foxes make it are not guided by anything other than invisible hands, attached to the longest arms imaginable, which connect to the ground at some point, but that junction and those directions are completely mysterious. They cannot be traced back to any known heart and that just adds more to the sensational dizziness.
Fleet Foxes MySpace Page
Sub Pop Records
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