Fleet Foxes help themselves to another masterpiece

Many bands buckle under the pressure of delivering an anticipated successor to a debut album that received massive, unexpected levels of critical acclaim.  Robin Pecknold, leader of the Seattle-based nature loving folk-rockers Fleet Foxes, took the opportunity to create his most personal — and best — effort yet.

Pecknold brings back to the table every element that helped their second EP “Sun Giant” and first full-length “Fleet Foxes” succeed, and then some — look no further than the noise-laden curiosity “The Shrine/An Argument”.  Their signature thick, multi-part harmonies are brought back frequently on exuberant tracks like “Battery Kinzie.”  The delicate, acoustic picking of past successes like “Quiet Houses” are matched and often one-upped, especially on “Lorelai,” a softer track reminiscent of the Beatles’ “Norweigian Wood.”

Immediately, it becomes clear why it took Pecknold and his fox pack three years to follow up their last release. Unlike their first two, “Helplessness Blues” bleeds with inner conflict and heavy self-reflection, beginning with the very first lyric of the opener “Montezuma”: “So now I am older/than my mother and father/when they had their daughter/now what does that say about me?”

Pecknold returns to narrating his coming of age on the album’s title track and standout centerpiece where he debates his role in society, happily surrendering all comforting illusions he once had. “I was raised up believing I was somehow unique...and now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be/a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me,” he concludes.  “But I don’t know what that will be/I’ll get back to you someday soon, you will see.”

And then again on sprightly closer “Grown Ocean”, Pecknold returns to singing about the endless pursuit of this mystery: “All my life I will wait to attain it.”  It’s a perfect finale for the album, encompassing its recurring concepts of declaring enthusiasm for life and embracing life’s uncertainties, and once again echoing the sentiment of the album’s most profound lyric off the title track: “What good is it to sing helplessness blues?”