The Fleet Foxes Genres

1+1 = 3

It’s really about time, you know. For the past four or five years we have had to endure a rapid recycling of pretty much every pop music genre since known to man.

From the 60s girly soul-pop of Winehouse and Duffy, through the skinny-tied post-punk and Northen soap romanticism of the Editors, Kaiser Chiefs, the pop-trash mash of Mika and Scissor Sisters all the way to the 80s punk-funk moroder recycling of LCD Soundsystem, we have seen it all.

It’s not that there aren’t any great tunes there, and a few decent albums, but my gripe is that I have yet to hear many bands that transcend their influences. So at last, it’s hugely refreshing to hear the Fleet Foxes. I won’t say I am a huge fan. Yet. But I am intruiged.

Their close harmony bears comparison with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, The Beach Boys, So-Cal pop or even Appalachian folk, but as their eponymous full length debut album reveals over it’s 40 minutes, the overwhelming feeling is not that you are listening to a band absorbed by influences, but by one who are reaching towards something new.

The effect is magical. Completely out of step with the current genres and trends, Fleet Foxes do more than reproduce the sounds of the past, they point the way towards a glorious, sun soaked and plangent future that is as tragic as it is beautiful. As likely to succeed as a black man for the US President with a rhetoric of hope.

Oh, wait a minute…