Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes by: Ed Butler Wed:25-Jun-08 Label: Sub Pop Year: 2008 WB rating 84 out of 100

Fleet Foxes owe a lot to Brian Wilson, and acknowledge as much in the opening 10 seconds of their eponymous debut album. Layers of a capella vocal harmonies intone animal-related non sequiturs, calling to mind images of preppy young gents clad in polo shirts and pullovers pretending to play guitars and singing into one microphone. 21 seconds in, and ‘Sun it Rises’ begins and, the debt being paid, Fleet Foxes’ true identity begins to unveil itself. Replacing layered vocals with layered guitar and unobtrusive organs, a pastoral brand of indie-folk emerges.

Fleet Foxes is a triumph of a sound that consistently flirts with kitsch and cliché. Baroque leanings can so easily slide into the realm of triteness and irrelevance, and Fleet Foxes certainly toy with some of the more limiting habits of their less talented brethren. Sporting cover art replicating the 1559 painting, Netherlandish Proverbs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder – a sweeping, busy snapshot of life in a dark ages village – the likelihood of a twee piece of ornate pop was always a possibility. But Fleet Foxes know better than that, as their two EPs, 2006’s self titled effort, and February’s Sun Giant EP attested to.

With only one song reaching the five-minute mark, and another three topping four, brevity is the biggest weapon in the arsenal – or would be, if it were not for the unleashing of the band’s three-part harmonies. While repeatedly unfurled on each and every song, restraint is often the order of the day; as unobtrusive as they are, backing singers are often shelved to allow frontman Robin Pecknold to take centre stage. And thankfully he is comfortable there.

Make no mistake, dear reader, this is a pop album. Fleet Foxes is positively brimming with hooks which, in lesser hands, would merely be thrown in the faces of potential listeners. Here they are submerged in prettiness. Gently caressed acoustic guitar, swelling harmonies and the occasional electric instrument all conspire to simultaneously obscure and enhance Pecknold’s natural gifts with melody. On the rare occasion that a simple vocal flourish of guitar fill is allowed to surface, its true beauty is in its brevity. On album highlight ‘Ragged Wood’, Pecknold sings "The spring is upon us/Follow my only song" and, nonsensical as the lyric is, the three-note ascending melody lifts the spirits beyond a mere gorgeous harmony.

Songs like ‘Ragged Wood’ are something of an anomaly, in that the presence of a rhythm section is noticeable, with its upbeat tempo and clear tambourine clashes. While Nicholas Peterson’s drumming is perfectly audible, his influence on the album - restraining any tendency to expand into unnecessary instrumentation – is so organic as to be utterly unobtrusive.

Of course, it’s easy to be swept away by lush vocal harmonies and organic rhythms, easy to overlook flaws in the almost chemically induced willingness to laud such beauty. But by track nine, ‘Meadowlarks’, the harmonies begin to lose their sparkle, through overkill more than incompetence. Acoustic guitar, ukulele and organ suddenly lack the quaint charm that made ‘White Winter Hymnal’ a classic song. The upbeat strumming of the penultimate ‘Blue Ridge Mountain’, recalling the missing link between Fleetwood Mac and Midlake, manages to retain the listener’s attention, but after songs of the calibre of ‘Ragged Wood’, ‘Quiet Houses’ and ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’, it falls a touch flat.

Nonetheless, it is indeed a rewarding experience to hear an album that can be as beautiful as Fleet Foxes. For a quintet of Seattle natives to absorb the lessons taught them by Mr Wilson from across eras and replicate them in such a loving, yet entirely non-derivative, way is an unalloyed delight to hear and an experience that will beggar repeating ere the season is out. As ‘Oliver James’ closing a capella fades away, a fittingly comparable bookend to the album’s beginning, an experience gently ends. One, thankfully, that can be repeated at will, well into the future.