Rock star Robin’s comeback is just a flight of fancy
Taking a six- year break just as you are on the cusp of arenapacking rock stardom isn’t usually the smartest move for a blossoming musician.
But that’s what Fleet Foxes singer and songwriter Robin Pecknold did after his band’s 2011 album Helplessness Blues. The Seattle group had been building serenely on their self-titled 2008 debut — a Uk top-three album.
But Pecknold decided to put the group on hold. He took an art and literature degree, went trekking in the Himalayas and taught himself to surf. now, as his band reconvene, all that momentum has been lost.
One might have expected the band to play it safe after such a long hiatus. instead, they have returned with their most unpredictable and convoluted record yet.
Crack-Up, named after an F. Scott Fitzgerald essay, revisits their familiar cascading harmonies, but adds surprising twists and complexities. Drummer Josh Tillman left the band in 2012, reinventing himself as the wisecracking singer- songwriter Father John Misty, leaving Pecknold, 31, and guitarist Skyler Skjelset, as the creative fulcrum of a slimmed-down quintet. C RACK UP takes its cue from one of the prime cuts on Helplessness Blues. The Shrine/an argument was an eight-minute song split into movements and the notion of welding together contrasting musical segments is at play again.
But the instrumentation is more expansive, with electronics and jazzy brass interludes accompanying the band’s traditional acoustic guitars.
The upshot is an album that’s bursting with ideas and detail, but which is hard to love.
The three- titled opening track i am all That i need / arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar gives fair warning of what lies ahead. at least, after a dreary beginning, those trademark harmonies arrive to inject welcome urgency. Echoes of classic U.S. West Coast bands pervade the shimmering Cassius and On another Ocean, the latter illuminated by jazzy sax. Fool’s Errand is an attractive chamber-pop number and kept Woman a simple ballad.
ambition gets the better of the group on the nine-minute epic Third Of May / Odaigahara which opens with sunny harmonies before moving through slower sections and impenetrable interludes.
Pecknold’s voice is still distinctive, but his lyrics are getting more obscure. greek myth, Japanese mountains and a monster from Beowulf aren’t exactly run- of-the-mill topics for a rock band. That’s admirable, but there are times when it all becomes a bit precious.
FOR West Coast rock of an earlier vintage — albeit with British trappings — it’s hard to beat Fleetwood Mac. and with Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie joined by Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, four-fifths of the band’s classic line-up are present on this self-titled duets album.
allusions to vintage tracks abound. in My World harks back to 1977’s Rumours. The swirling funk of Too Far gone recalls the influences adopted by Buckingham on 1979’s experimental Tusk. But it’s missing the darker magic and mystery of the absent Stevie nicks.
There’s an air of fatigue to On With The Show, which celebrates the pair’s staying power with a stoical sigh: ‘There’s nowhere to go but on down the road.’
But Christine contributes some impressive, tender ballads, with the bittersweet game Of Pretend adding typically barbed but romantic touches. n