Helplessness Blues
by Fleet Foxes

So much modern indie folk is afraid to embrace ANY minimalism. Many of these songs, most notably "Sim Sala Bim" and the title track, would work better as stripped-down acoustic ballads. Why does everything have to eventually crescendo into a chorus of wailing? Plus, more often than not, the harmonic content of the gigantic chamber-orchestra arrangements and obnoxiously loud vocal harmonies is not even interesting enough to justify its inclusion in the mix. Even on "Bitter Dancer," a relatively quiet moment, the vocal harmony blocks accompanying the main melody are mixed obscenely loud, to the point that they sound horribly pitchy. "Blue Spotted Tail" is a beautiful moment, and proof that lots of these songs are complete just with a guitar and a single voice. In short, Helplessness Blues' bloated instrumental accompaniments just feel tasteless and empty due to uninspired arranging and bad mixing. Complaints aside, I will commend it for some lovely acoustic guitar sounds, decent folk-pop songwriting, and commitment to a melancholy mood.

Takes the sounds of their first album and makes them into something more grand and mature. Lyrically not as catchy but with a lot more to say.

While it is executed with the subtlety and beauty that Fleet Foxes always show, I can’t help but feel at times towards the end it starts to drag. The debut is still the record I go to more frequently.

Fave songs: Helplessness Blues, The Shrine/Argument, and Montezuma.

There is a lot of beautiful moments on this record but the album on the whole drags on a little too long. This record does have some amazing songs in the form of Helplessness Blues, Montezuma and Battery Kinzie. All of these stick to the folk style they are going for and they work very well. They have done a great job in making this modern folk sound that really suits their vocalist and the instrumentation is of a high quality as well. The acoustic guitar being a stand out for me especially on songs like Blue Spotted Tail. However, the album is to drawn out and it does get very repetitive by the closing track. There are quite a few cuts I find to be unnecessary as well that could be removed. Overall, the record is amazing in spells but is let down by the filler and the bloated nature of the release.

From Jboy56 03/26/2022 13:35 | #283424

Folk rock of the 2010's

A charming and beautiful record. I’d like to propose that the title track be adopted as the new US national anthem.

From VictorVale 10/05/2021 13:35 | #274699

Lindíssimo, mas não é fácil de escutar.

From teague 09/29/2021 16:31 | #274412

Runs a little long, but holy cow it's amazing. Definitely better than the eponymous debut.

There is a lot of sweet little things in Helplessness blues. The soft harmonies and plucking strings all sound gentle across the ears. Despite this I can't help but feel like I'm missing something. I never get that rush of feeling I was expecting from the lyrics. I really want something more from it.