Crack-Up

In the midst of the endless formula tweaking and inventive twists, there is nary an ill-advised departure or split-second of suggestive identity crisis. It’s all fresh, and it’s all Fleet Foxes.

Crack-Up joins the ranks of albums like Homogenic, OK Computer and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—works by eclectic, established artists who decided to push boundaries even further and subsequently produced masterpieces. Fleet Foxes’ latest album will likely be added to best-of lists for years to come and championed as their knotty, complex magnum opus.

Fleet Foxes return with a grand, theatrical approach to music as a whole, and although they reminisce on their grand, prog-folk glory days, Crack-Up as a musical statement is genre-less.

Though they may take several listens to reveal their beauty, the payoff for your patience and attention is substantial.

Crack-Up is perhaps Fleet Foxes' most epic and inventive record yet.

With Crack-Up's earnest explorations of the human condition and evocative, progressive composition, Fleet Foxes maintain their status as one of the best folk rock bands of the 21st century.

Crack-Up contains his most compelling writing to date because it’s so damn relatable in 2017--reacting and retreating inwards as people and institutions fail to meet the standards set in one’s head.

They make music that is distinctly their own, and this latest effort is another example of that ability. Its beauty and craft are on display throughout, providing a glimpse of music that is a joy to hear.

On their latest, the band’s melodies are crisper and sonic dynamics and tempo-shifts are employed to greater effect.

Challenging throughout and at times jarring and inscrutable, Crack-Up searches for a resolution just out of reach.

Crack-Up, is at once sumptuous and ambitious, a serpentine journey from the center of harmony-drenched folk-pop out to the edge of Pecknold’s brain and back. It is lovely, strange and generous, and ultimately a very welcome return for the Seattle band.

The whole album is a cabinet of curiosities to discover and decipher.

These 11 tracks are immersive, shifting creations, retaining the heavenly signature harmonies of FF’s previous work, while further expanding the band’s sound.

The same but different, more polished yet more heartfelt, forceful yet calm.

Orchestral, experimental, and more challenging than either of the band's previous releases, it's a natural fit for the Nonesuch label, whose heritage was built on such attributes. For Fleet Foxes, it represents a shift away from their more idyllic early days into a period of artistic growth and sophistication.

Throughout this intensely poetic, introspective album, currents of guilt, regret and resolution battle in quiet turbulence, the group’s trademark harmonies and acoustic folk settings augmented with additional sonic strata.

Some may be unconvinced by the ambitious leap Fleet Foxes have made on album three, but there’s really no doubting the first-rate intelligence behind this uncompromising and ever-changing piece of work.

It confirms that rarest of achievements: a group somehow hanging on to the essence who they are, while pushing their art into thrillingly unforeseen places. [Aug 2017, p.99]

[It is] distinctive, involving, challenging, accessible, progressive and most other things that continue to be desirable in an indie-rock record, whatever the year. [Jul 2017, p.22]

Six years on, Crack-Up is deeper, richer and more literate (starting with the title’s F Scott Fitzgerald debt), overflowing with ideas and destabilising tonal shifts. You might call it challenging, but Fleet Foxes were never likely to settle for anchoring comeback gestures of easy reassurance: rather, Crack-Up re-asserts their exalted tug on the heart by testing it at ever-greater distances from known shores.

While it’s not short of irritating periods of pretension, it’s par for the course when beauty, indulgence and complexity are key ingredients in the melting pot.

It is a record that tries to rise above the expectations created by the band’s past success. In doing so, it loses sight of where their past success came from.

If 'Fleet Foxes' was an unbroken hike up from the foothills into the peaks of the Appalachians, 'Crack-Up' is more like the winding train ride home.

They've upped their prog ambitions--tracks wash together, song titles abound with opaque punctuation, and the sweeping melodies often wander into moody places, away from the safety of the campfire.

Crack-Up takes contrasting musical ideas and textures and makes them functional, if not transcendent. Ultimately, though, the album fails to shed much light on the mind of an artist more preoccupied with shrouding his songs in crashing waves, shadow, and smoke.