Now on Nonesuch in Capacity Wallet and Folder. The second Fleet Foxes album full of sweet folk, baroque pop and free jazz that more than matches the greatness of their influences - Roy Harper, Smile era Brian Wilson and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Helplessness Blues was recorded over the course of a year at Avast recording, Bear Creek Studios, Dreamland Studios, and Reciprocal Recording.
The album was mixed by Phil Ek and co-produced by Fleet Foxes and Ek. Helplessness Blues is a thoughtful, elegant record that retains a great deal of what people loved about the Foxes the first time around. It adds some surprises too. the jazz coda to The Shrine / An Argument shows off the Foxes's expansive ears; the faintly eastern lilt on songs such as "Bedouin Dress" or "The Plains / Bitter Dancer" keeps their template fresh, to the mesh of guitars and voices come zithers and Tibetan singing bowls, as well as something called a marxophone.
Helplessness Blues is born out of a fraught gestation period, touched by doubt, uncertainty and the travails of growing older and finding your place. But it is also a thing of beauty, and as the blissful outro of its title-track or the breathless, exuberant surge of closer Grown Ocean demonstrate, at its core lies a tangible sense of wonder and hope.