Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

The second Fleet Foxes album is 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.

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.