Fleet Foxes – A Very Lonely Solstice (2020)

Hello, I guess. It’s been a while.

Not since the last time we spoke (recent, unexpected and ugly), 

but since the last time I wished I could show you something. 

–

I wasn’t planning on an intentional Solstice Listen, it kinda just happened.

So, Pecknold recorded this and streamed it on the 21st of December 2020. 

The digital concert was bookended with Robin Pecknold being accompanied 

by a masked and scattered Resistance Revival Chorus. 

A technical choice and health hazard at the same time, I guess.

Between these two songs “Waiding In Waist-High Water” and “Can I Believe You?” 

is a set comprised of older songs, tracks of off Shore that was released earlier that year, 

and a cover of a Bee Gee’s song “In The Morning.” 

It is just Robin and a nylon guitar ringing out,

filling the high ceilings of St. Ann. 

Spilling guts to no one. 

I know when I would talk to you about Fleet Foxes I would usually bash Shore. 

Five years later, I still don’t think it has the same impact all of their previous work has. 

This September, I gave it a listen again and, 

returning to the tracks more favourable than others,

 I found connection that 

I don’t think was previously there. 

Crack Up and Helpleness Blues seem more well-aimed to me,

 more evocative, not as foggy and indifferent. 

At least, when examining them as a whole. 

In these bare versions of the songs, 

comprised of the main vocal melody, the harmony, and any voice leadings 

that can sit seemlessly within them, 

the structure makes more sense.

I am not distracted by a dizzying production, 

that is at times charming but more often than not, 

like a hand reaching out a little further than convenient. 

These renditions are stripped of the twinkling elements of orchestration 

that latch onto your arm and pull you from section to section, 

welcoming and enthralling. 

Yet, they are still, 

and at times even more so, 

captivating, driving, meaningful. 

His vocals are precise and illustrative. 

After more than ten years of listening to their music, 

I can still close my eyes and think of it as the guiding voice of the woods. 

Even though knowing what Robin looks like,

 and how he acts online, 

can intercept this vision.

The church’s natural acoustics are reminiscent of 

the vocal treatment he seemed to be leaning into

in earlier tracks like “Icicle Tusk” and “Isles.” 

The two tracks I felt like listening to today, 

and got me dragged into all this solstice pondering.

Listening to a stripped back “Helplessness Blues,” I realies I need it now more than ever. 

When I was 18 and fresh out of my swimming bowl 

and into the puddle I am still drowning in today, 

I couldn’t get enough of it. 

I thought no one can ever possibly understand me 

more than what this song alludes to. 

Either I haven’t changed or the crushing desire for someone to place purpose 

in my depressingly empty hands 

is a reoccuring theme that is experienced heavier at 25 and jobless.

He changed the line into “and I could wait tables while you ran the store.” 

I thought of you and all that lost intention. 

This is what made me want to write this today.

I am at such a loss. I don’t think I have anywhere to turn to. 

I don’t know where I want to be. 

It has been months that I have been facing constant 

rejection, stagnation and indifference, 

when all I want to feel is movement

. 

I am constantly hitting brick walls, or they seem to be hitting me. 

I am sporting a punched skull that you will never hear about, 

that, even after a month is still sore and I don’t know what to do.

In “In The Morning” Robin sings 

“Building castles in the shifting sands in a world that nobody understands 

[…] 

Please be patient with your life.”

turning the Bee Gee’s serenade and Nina Simone’s surmon 

into a soft spoken prayer. 

The gripping lines:

“Time’s not what I belong to” in “I’m Not My Season”

and “May the last long year be forgiven. All that war left within it. 

I couldn’t, though I’m begging to” 

in “Featherweight.” 

The entire performance begs for a forgiveness of the past 

but without rushing the scrubbing of its memory. 

Reasoning with pain, at the alter, on its knees, waiting to rid the hurt from the memory 

but not the memory from the heart.

I am, as you left me, still on edge with my past, 

trying to figure out how to deal with the loss I am feeling 

while trying to not capsize from the anxiety of wasting my life away thinking.

–

One day this summer 

amidst exploring with friends and climbing on scrap metal, 

I left the laughter and found a rusty staircase where I sat my heavy bones

 inbetween thin clouds 

and looked towards the mountains. 

I listened to “Blue Spotted Tail” 

and hoped to never think of you again.

I wanted to give every thought of you to the trees and 

let them have to deal with you. It hasn’t worked. 

If I told you how many times I prayed for you, you wouldn’t believe me.

No worries, I am still an agnostic, 

and no longer waiting on miracles.