Fleet Foxes
Sensation By Way Of Invisible Arms Entwined With Golden Voices That Shine Like Rivers
Apr 17, 2008
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound Engineering by Patrick Stolley
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Drops in the River
original version appears on Sun Giant EP
This is I guess the newest song we have been playing on this tour, it and "Sun Giant" came together really late in the process of writing the EP. Lyrically I guess it's just about reaching out to someone who's having a rough go, just saying that nothing is permanent or something. Musically the idea was to take that really too-delicate acoustic guitar melody and build everything bombastically, have it start really quiet and go through a lot of volume fluctuations throughout… on the recording we used all kinds of pretentious instruments like dulcimers and kotos (played with a bow no less!!) so I guess this version is more stripped down. This one can be hard to sing live so I hope it comes across OK but I understand if it doesn't!!!!!
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Sun It Rises
unreleased
; on the forthcoming full-length Fleet Foxes This song is really really simple. It's basically about how sad it can sometimes be when people grow apart for no other reason besides growing older, like friends from grade school who're united by comic books and Nintendo often end up going in completely different directions once they reach Middle and High School... that happened to me a lot and it seems like a shame. I wish I would've been smart enough to hold onto my friends at that age even though we started getting into different kinds of things. What do "things" matter anyway when a friendship's in the balance. Musically, this started as two different songs (the only two sections of the song) that got slammed together kind of clumsily into what we've got now. I had that song El Condor Pasa in mind when we were working on this but it didn't really turn out sounding like that. Too much reverb or something.
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White Winter Hymnal
unreleased
; on the forthcoming full-length Fleet Foxes This is the first song on the LP, it's lyrically fairly meaningless I guess but it's not really meant to mean something. As an introduction to the record, we thought it would be nice to start it with a simple jam that's focussed on singing - on the record it starts with a tongue-in-cheek harmony thing that we hoped would make people laugh or something but I think it just confuses them. This is my favorite song to play live, though singing it live is sometimes difficult because the lyrics are so vague. Weird how that works!
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Sun Giant
original version appears on Sun Giant EP
Another "Sun" song, this one was meant to be just a simple "ode" of sorts to the simplest things in life. I often get really caught up in minutiae in my day to day life so this song is just a reminder (to myself I guess) that there is value in just looking at the sun (or something equally simple) and not thinking about anything else. This song is another tough live one so if it sounds awful we're sorry!! Gahh!!! We're trying!
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
