Fleet Foxes
Crack-Up

The Fleet Foxes return after 6 years with a new album, "Crack-Up".

The album slightly departs from the style of their previous works, particularly the eponymous 2008 album that brought them to prominence, as the tracks have a less immediate form and the references to the great pop/folk bands of the past (such as the Beach Boys of "Pet Sounds") are less evident. The difficulty in interpreting the work left some commentators puzzled, but in reality, "Crack-Up" represents a work in which the Fleet Foxes achieve their full artistic maturity.

The songs often have an irregular structure, as is evident in the opening "I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar", where a softly murmured part alternates with another characterized by a fast-paced rhythm. However, this irregularity is never convoluted but instead emerges naturally in the calm and expressive flow of the musical tracks.

Other tracks, like "Mearcstapa", unfold in melodic wanderings without ever arriving at a main, easily recognizable theme. The album appears as an evolution of thoughts and feelings of a person who is not compelled to explain themselves in an immediate and immediately intelligible way, a person without an interlocutor, but precisely for this, those thoughts and feelings appear all the more profound and authentic.

For what we have said, it should be clear how the song title "Fool's Errand" proves to be particularly representative of the style and substance of the work. A perhaps crazy wandering, but full of sentiment and musical richness.

[We saw the Fleet Foxes live a few months ago in Ferrara. The concert proved to be a bit disappointing. In part, this may have been due to the sound system, I believe provided by the festival organizing the event, which was not up to par with the heightened dynamism of the group's music, both in terms of volume and timbre. However, perhaps live the Fleet Foxes lose that magic they manage to express in the recording studio and end up being just a 'normal' pop/folk band.]