Fleet Foxes: A Very Lonely Solstice live stream review – all is balm
Despite its billing – “a very lonely solstice” – this live stream doesn’t start lonely at all. Dressed all in white, a masked, socially distanced choir fills the pews of this gothic-arched New York church. These angelic figures are members of the Resistance Revival Chorus – female and non-binary singers whose aim is to motivate and uplift.
The camera eventually focuses on Robin Pecknold, prime mover of Fleet Foxes. Seated in the nave, playing acoustic guitar, his mask rides up into his eyes as he joins in with the choir. Wading In Waist-High Water is the opening track of Fleet Foxes’ fourth album, Shore – one of many to feature a watery metaphor. The union of voices here is underplayed, consolatory.
As befits a band who draw on the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Fleet Foxes’ endeavours are often harmonious. This live stream hits a few particularly sweet spots. Shore’s release coincided with the autumn equinox: the live debuts of many of its songs are going out on the solstice, the time of year when the steady creep of darkness is reversed.
Shore is one of the very best albums of 2020 – full of stoicism, compassion and hope for the future. There have been all sorts of responses to the times we have been living through, but Shore has absolutely been one of the most bejewelled, privileging loveliness and hard-won gratitude over despair. It talked the talk, and walked the walk too: while Fleet Foxes have never been a band for dissonance, Shore is full of expansive, sunlit beauty, its harmonies more layered than a millefeuille.
Puzzlingly, the start is where this sanctified union of voices ends. A drum kit is a red herring, too – the rest of the hour-long performance finds Pecknold alone with his acoustic guitar.
It’s not as though he didn’t warn us. Pecknold’s Instagram described this gig as “me by myself on the longest night of the year in a spooky choir loft honouring the loneliness of 2020 w/a nylon string and some songs new and old”. A few days prior, Pecknold, drummer Homer Steinweiss (the Dap-Kings) and the choir recorded a live version of Can I Believe You, which aired on US TV. Overall, though, it does seem like a waste of a good choir, one that could have embodied the fellow feeling of which Pecknold has so often sung. The Resistance Revival Chorus return, fleetingly, for a rehearsal outtake at the end, rubbing salt into the wound.
As it is, the pre-recorded action moves into the balcony, where Pecknold loses his mask and some inhibitions. Sunblind calls upon Pecknold to “forget reserve” and celebrate the songwriters who inspired him, many gone before their time. Here, his waters run deep. The song references American Water, an album by Silver Jews, whose singer, David Berman, died in 2019. But Pecknold is really “swimming” in the artistry of his fellow troubadours, vowing to enjoy his life, since theirs were cut short. The list of forebears and contemporaries is long; the live stream credits add another. Tonight’s gig is dedicated to Sam Jayne, leader of the raucous cult band Love As Laughter, found dead in Brooklyn in mid-December. Recognising more works to which he is beholden, Pecknold’s set takes in covers his band have done live before. (In the) Morning of My Life is a Barry Gibb composition, and Silver Dagger is a traditional, best known through Joan Baez’s rendition.
Years ago, Pecknold wrestled with existential angst, vowing “I’ll get back to you soon” on a variety of questions. The magnificent title track of Fleet Foxes’ 2011 second album, Helplessness Blues, is one of those songs in the indie rock canon that should ring down the ages, just as it does in the empty church tonight.
Shore seems to be an answer, of sorts, to much of that searching. A handful of its loveliest songs convey solutions. On Featherweight, Pecknold “lets that grasping fall” amid elegant fingerpicking and bittersweet strumming.
I’m Not My Season is this too-short gig’s final song. Here, Pecknold reassures someone in trouble that theirs is a transient state, not to be identified with too deeply. In what looks to be a long, hard winter – solstice or no solstice – his words are a balm. “You’re not the season you’re in,” Pecknold croons.