Album review: Fleet Foxes -- Helplessness Blues

I’M not ashamed to admit (ok maybe a little) the Fleet Foxes gave me one of those cringeworthy ‘zen-like moments’ driving my car the other day -you know the situations where everything just seems perfect at that very second?
It was a gloriously sunny day and, driving my car along a country road, my surroundings were awash with strikingly beautiful daffodils in bloom at either side of the road, swamping the landscape.
Radio 1 DJ Greg James introduced new single Battery Kinzie and the rest is history.
It was just so right.
Not only did my drivers’ arm glow from the sun’s rays, but my soul basked in the glorious interference-damaged tones emitting from the muffled speakers.
Anyway, now we’ve put that self-indulgent drivel to one side, I’m pleased to proclaim Fleet Foxes’ second full-length Helplessness Blues is a revelation, building one 2008’s wonderful self-titled effort and reaffirming their status as folk’s pin-ups – a tough ask after producing such a critically acclaimed debut.
The glorious opener Montezuma is a welcomed summer’s wake-up call thanks to frontman Robin Pecknold’s soothing vocals and tricking guitar melody, and the enormous Battery Kinzie is a daring horseback ride across a vast valley of decadent drums and epic backing vocals.
Modern folk hymn Helplessness Blues grows from a campfire sing-a-long to a superlative biopic of a hardworking man’s struggle to pass through life as best as he can, penetrating the heartstrings with each decisive strum.
Penknold’s alluring voice is at its spine-tingling best in the icecap-melting crooner Someone You’d Admire, and is tested to the limit in the seven-minute opera of The Shrine/An Argument; a dizzying country anthem of biblical proportions.
You’ll be pushed hard to find many low points on Helplessness Blues but The Cascades, the album’s shortest inclusion, though a delightful insight into the band’s faultless musicianship, almost becomes a parody of the famous banjo scene in Deliverance, and Lorelai tries its best not to drag, but fails to touch the album’s sky-high standards.
In 2008, Fleet Foxes’ blend of warm rootsy guitars and Pecknold’s limitless, smouldering vocals, gave the alt-folk genre a welcomed boost, and became a staple inclusion to coffee house soundtracks across the globe.
Three years on, their formula has remained largely the same – retaining its instantly likeable rustic, organic and raw quality.
For Fleet Foxes to achieve regular radio airplay, sell hundreds of thousands of records and reach our to millions of listeners was arguably the last thing they expected, but Helplessness Blues, based on the success of their debut, should propel them to stadium-filling status in no time.