I trust Sub Pop so much that I blindly pick up albums by any new artist it signs on
I trust Sub Pop, the label behind sever- al rock history greats, so much that I blindly pick up albums by any new artist it signs on
SOMETIMES WHEN you're searching for new musicians you need look no further than the record label that publishes their work. Sub Pop is one such label. Set up in Seattle 25 years ago, it was a independent label that made a name when it signed up the vanguards of the Seattle grunge rock movement Nirvana, of course, but also Mudhoney and Soundgarden. Those three bands may be legendary in rock music's history but the list of great bands that have worked with the label is impressive Sonic Youth, Death Cab for Cutie, White Stripes, Modest Mouse, The Shins, Built to Spill, Foals, The Smashing Pumpkins.... It's a long list of stellar musicians and bands. So, although Sub Pop is not really a kosher indie label any longer (Warner Brothers has a biggish stake in it now), many people trust the label so much as to blindly pick up albums by new artists that it signs on. I tried Wolf Parade, Vetiver, CSS (Cansei der Ser Sexy, a very agreeable Brazilian band) and many other bands that I've become a fan of now simply because they have worked with Sub Pop.
Therefore, a few years ago, when the buzz began about a band called Fleet Foxes, and I learnt that Sub Pop was their label, I sampled them. There was another thing that swung my decision to try Fleet Foxes: they're from Seattle. But sharing their hometown with grunge legends such as the three I mentioned at the beginning or even with one of American rock's biggest bands, Pearl Jam, doesn't mean that the music of Fleet Foxes is anything like that of those bands. Fleet Foxes is categorised as a folk music band. But that's probably just a convenient sticker. In reality, Fleet Foxes mix as much of folk music as they do classic rock and pop to make their very appealing brand of music.
They're led by singer and songwriter Robin Pecknold whose vocals pay homage to rock and pop music's big stars such as Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young as well as UK's Fairport Convention (a great folk-rock institution that changed its line-up innumerable times but made music that is timeless and always relevant). Pecknold and his five band members (who play instruments that include the mandolin, keyboards and guitars) make no-nonsense music: earthy lyrics and songs loaded with finely done vocal harmonies. Oh yes, there's this other thing that sets them apart from any other Seattle-based band that I've heard: they don't sound as if they belong to a city. There is rustic, rural flavour to their songs, an openness that can suggest that they record, rehearse and play their music in the wilderness.
By all accounts, that is probably not true. Fleet Foxes are pretty much a city band but their music, refreshingly, doesn't sound like they are. Here, check out the lyrics to one of their songs, Oliver James: On the way to your brother's house in the valley, dear/ By the river bridge a cradle floating beside me./ In the whitest water on the banks against the stone/ You will lift his body from the shore and bring him home/ Oliver James washed in the rain no longer/ Oliver James washed in the rain no longer. Oliver James is from the Fleet Foxes' self-titled full-length album that came out in 2008 and Pecknold's warm, bittersweet voice does full justice to those lovely lyrics, as it also does to the other songs on the album. This year, Fleet Foxes released their second fulllength, Helplessness Blues, again to critical acclaim. They still sound unpretentious and warm, except that there is a bit of a dark tinge to the new set of songs, as if on their sophomore effort, the boys from Seattle have grown up a bit. What about the rusticity of their music and the hat-tip to folk-rockers of the 1960s and '70s? No fears on those counts; both are intact in the second album.
If you haven't heard Fleet Foxes yet and would like to start, I can suggest a single that you could probably hear on YouTube. It's called White Winter Hymnal and it's off their first album. Listen to it.
You'll like it. And then, probably want both their albums.
I trust Sub Pop, the label behind sever- al rock history greats, so much that I blindly pick up albums by any new artist it signs on
SOMETIMES WHEN you're searching for new musicians you need look no further than the record label that publishes their work. Sub Pop is one such label. Set up in Seattle 25 years ago, it was a independent label that made a name when it signed up the vanguards of the Seattle grunge rock movement Nirvana, of course, but also Mudhoney and Soundgarden. Those three bands may be legendary in rock music's history but the list of great bands that have worked with the label is impressive Sonic Youth, Death Cab for Cutie, White Stripes, Modest Mouse, The Shins, Built to Spill, Foals, The Smashing Pumpkins.... It's a long list of stellar musicians and bands. So, although Sub Pop is not really a kosher indie label any longer (Warner Brothers has a biggish stake in it now), many people trust the label so much as to blindly pick up albums by new artists that it signs on. I tried Wolf Parade, Vetiver, CSS (Cansei der Ser Sexy, a very agreeable Brazilian band) and many other bands that I've become a fan of now simply because they have worked with Sub Pop.
Therefore, a few years ago, when the buzz began about a band called Fleet Foxes, and I learnt that Sub Pop was their label, I sampled them. There was another thing that swung my decision to try Fleet Foxes: they're from Seattle. But sharing their hometown with grunge legends such as the three I mentioned at the beginning or even with one of American rock's biggest bands, Pearl Jam, doesn't mean that the music of Fleet Foxes is anything like that of those bands. Fleet Foxes is categorised as a folk music band. But that's probably just a convenient sticker. In reality, Fleet Foxes mix as much of folk music as they do classic rock and pop to make their very appealing brand of music.
They're led by singer and songwriter Robin Pecknold whose vocals pay homage to rock and pop music's big stars such as Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young as well as UK's Fairport Convention (a great folk-rock institution that changed its line-up innumerable times but made music that is timeless and always relevant). Pecknold and his five band members (who play instruments that include the mandolin, keyboards and guitars) make no-nonsense music: earthy lyrics and songs loaded with finely done vocal harmonies. Oh yes, there's this other thing that sets them apart from any other Seattle-based band that I've heard: they don't sound as if they belong to a city. There is rustic, rural flavour to their songs, an openness that can suggest that they record, rehearse and play their music in the wilderness.
By all accounts, that is probably not true. Fleet Foxes are pretty much a city band but their music, refreshingly, doesn't sound like they are. Here, check out the lyrics to one of their songs, Oliver James: On the way to your brother's house in the valley, dear/ By the river bridge a cradle floating beside me./ In the whitest water on the banks against the stone/ You will lift his body from the shore and bring him home/ Oliver James washed in the rain no longer/ Oliver James washed in the rain no longer. Oliver James is from the Fleet Foxes' self-titled full-length album that came out in 2008 and Pecknold's warm, bittersweet voice does full justice to those lovely lyrics, as it also does to the other songs on the album. This year, Fleet Foxes released their second fulllength, Helplessness Blues, again to critical acclaim. They still sound unpretentious and warm, except that there is a bit of a dark tinge to the new set of songs, as if on their sophomore effort, the boys from Seattle have grown up a bit. What about the rusticity of their music and the hat-tip to folk-rockers of the 1960s and '70s? No fears on those counts; both are intact in the second album.
If you haven't heard Fleet Foxes yet and would like to start, I can suggest a single that you could probably hear on YouTube. It's called White Winter Hymnal and it's off their first album. Listen to it.
You'll like it. And then, probably want both their albums.
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