But, in the hands of the Fleet Foxes, the pastoral feels less like a particular zone in time and more like a space in which to parse ideas of self-reliance, the inconstancy of love, the pain of intimacy, the fear of loss, the sting of betrayal, and the strange but urgent project of hope. Or, I suppose, they are contemporary songs in the spirit of American folk music, with all of its Whitmanesque impulses. Like the writing of the band’s stylistic forebears- Dylan, Cohen, Young-the lyrics of the Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold are suffused with a yearning to return to a long-vanished, and perhaps entirely fictional, pastoral way of life: nature and its many facets, both beautiful and dangerous, rise to the level of a unifying character. The speakers of these songs are wary of putting on or being perceived as putting on. There is an inwardness in the songs, but also an awareness of others, almost a fear of navel-gazing or self-indulgence. When laid out on the page in stark black ink, the songs of the Fleet Foxes have the look and feel of mid-century American poems-direct, conversational, and flecked with an emotional urgency verging on the surreal.
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