Graham Reid | | <1 min read
This wonderful self-titled debut album by Seattle's Fleet Foxes has already appeared at Elsewhere and was one of the Best of Elsewhere 2008 albums -- but it makes a return because this belatedly released Special Edition packages it up with the band's equally sublime Sun Giant EP which they recorded shortly before the album.
The critical acclaim for their album caught them by surprise (see interview with Fleet Fox guitarist Casey Wescott) and their Auckland concert showed a band which was in command of its art but still nervous on stage. They delivered little more than the album and Sun Giant songs, presumably because they had little more in the bag to pull out.
But if the bag is small it is full of close harmony, slightly archaic folk-pop which is as referenced in obscure UK Anglo-folk bands such as Amazing Blondel or Fairport Convention as it is in Beach Boys harmonies and classic pop.
The five tracks on Sun Giant are of the same elegant, urgent and melodically weaving style as those on the album, as might be expected, and if you don't already have the album then you should simply leap in right here.
If you do have the album, then what? Trade it in and move up?
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