Fleet Foxes
Helplessness Blues 2LP

The second Fleet Foxes album full of sweet folk, baroque pop and free jazz that more than matches the greatness of their influences - Roy Harper, Smile era Brian Wilson and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Helplessness Blues was recorded over the course of a year at Avast recording, Bear Creek Studios, Dreamland Studios, and Reciprocal Recording.

The album was mixed by Phil Ek and co-produced by Fleet Foxes and Ek. Helplessness Blues is a thoughtful, elegant record that retains a great deal of what people loved about the Foxes the first time around. It adds some surprises too. the jazz coda to The Shrine / An Argument shows off the Foxes's expansive ears; the faintly eastern lilt on songs such as "Bedouin Dress" or "The Plains / Bitter Dancer" keeps their template fresh, to the mesh of guitars and voices come zithers and Tibetan singing bowls, as well as something called a marxophone.

Helplessness Blues is born out of a fraught gestation period, touched by doubt, uncertainty and the travails of growing older and finding your place. But it is also a thing of beauty, and as the blissful outro of its title-track or the breathless, exuberant surge of closer Grown Ocean demonstrate, at its core lies a tangible sense of wonder and hope.

NEW / Released in 2011 / Reissue 2017

Tracklist:

A1 Montezuma

A2 Bedouin Dress

A3 Sim Sala Bim

B1 Battery Kinzie

B2 The Plains / Bitter Dancer

B3 Helplessness Blues

C1 The Cascades

C2 Lorelai

C3 Someone You'd Admire

D1 The Shrine / An Argument

D2 Blue Spotted Tail

D3 Grown Ocean