Fleet Foxes

The latest band to benefit (suffer?) from the post-EP, pre-debut LP little thing us bloggers like to call "hype" since everyone's favorite backlash-band Vampire Weekend is Fleet Foxes - a quintet from Seattle who are going to release their debut self-titled album, Fleet Foxes, on June 3, 2008. At first listen it's pretty easy to go "Oh, another My Morning Jacket-sounding band." Though after listening to tracks from Evil Urges, it seems that MMJ isn't content to sound like they used to. It's pretty easy to lump a band who loves harmony as much as Fleet Foxes do in with other groups (MMJ, Band of Horses) who use that tried and true, almost anachronistic sound to wash their seemingly easy licks in glorious harmony.

In a way, Fleet Foxes are the kind of band that your pusedo-hippie parents and aunts and uncles could place alongside their Fleetwood Mac records and their copies of Carole King's Tapestry. At first listen, I tend to associate acts like this with that all too short alt country movement that gave Wilco it's first taste of success and (for better or worse) introduced us to Ryan Adams. Particularly an album called Tomorrow the Green Grass by the Jayhawks. That album is def. more rootsy than the Fleet Foxes, but is also a fine album so if you get into the Fleet Fox hype, check out some alt country, too. I doubt you'll be disappointed.