There’s a saying that a band has a lifetime to record their debut, but only a year to come up with their follow-up. If Fleet Foxes held true to that belief, Helplessness Blues may never have existed. The band recorded an album’s worth of songs in between massive tours following the success of 2008’s self-titled debut, but ditched the sessions before final mixing, choosing instead to rewrite and rerecord the material.
That patience turned out to be a masterstroke: Helplessness Blues is a bona fide candidate for album of the year, one that dovetails the positivity of the classic folk sounds from their first album with the shadowy exploration of deeper emotions.
One of the most beautiful aspects of Fleet Foxes was that the Seattle-based band had somehow managed to make an album that defied specific location or time. It condensed reference points from The Beach Boys to The Decemberists, melding pop and baroque into a distilled yet expansive style greater than the sum of its parts. That quality is gloriously ever-present on Helplessness Blues, but where the debut felt like a sunrise, opening into the brightness of the day, this album feels like the inevitable accompanying sunset, with the same lush instrumentation as before, but with more contemplative and introspective lyrical content.
The entire album faces up to more emotional questions than its predecessor. “Lorelai” features spiraling acoustic guitars and the same layered harmonies that set the band apart in its debut, but it’s a crushing song about love lost. “Montezuma” opens with the speaker musing the fact that he’s as old as his parents when they started their family, and questioning his path in life, ultimately rising to the image of what people will see when they lie dead in their coffin. Songs like “Battery Kinzie” or “Grown Ocean” float freely, but don’t feel unrestrained; there’s a driving tension at odds with the laid-back sensation of the vocal harmonies, driven by the simple but effective percussion elements.
The centerpiece of the album is the title track, which opens slowly with acoustic strums before frontman Robin Pecknold confronts a far more existential question than anything on the band’s first album. He begins, in a low, tentative croon, “I was raised up believing/ I was somehow unique/ like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes/ unique in each way you could see.” This is a beautiful image, one that is used constantly as a way to nurture artists. Pecknold then immediately takes the subject to another existential level, subverting the first line with greater fervor in the second. “And now after some thinking/ I’d say I’d rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery/ serving something beyond me.”
The song goes on to question purposes in life, where we’re meant to be, and simply concludes with confident uncertainty: “But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be/ I’ll get back to you someday soon, you will see.” In six minutes Fleet Foxes creates an ars poetica for their entire aesthetic, a densely-packed and organized wave of sound with a graceful lyric maturity that asks universal questions but never worries about providing concrete answers. There are none to be found, but it’s a wonder to behold.
A successful debut is hard to pull off but eventually ubiquitous, with new bands touted every year as the next big thing; a stellar sophomore effort following an impressive debut is a true rarity. TV on the Radio made a great leap forward on their second album Return to Cookie Mountain, Arcade Fire made incredible expansion on Neon Bible, but Helplessness Blues achieves something different from the trajectory of other critical darlings.
Their debut was something special, and instead of messing with a winning formula, they stuck to their stylistic strengths, choosing to look inside for more complex subject matter, not outwardly expanding sonic style. This isn’t to say this method is better than any other; it’s just somewhat unique to Fleet Foxes. They aren’t a snowflake, as their similarities to their influences can prove, but that doesn’t tarnish the achievement of this can’t-miss album.
Final Grade: A