On Shore Fleet Foxes released their new album Shore last week. This is a band that I consistently have time for. They create vast sonic worlds, every song happily existing a space that’s tucked neatly in to a musical universe that no-one else co-inhabits. It’s amazing how much Fleet Foxes sound like Fleet Foxes. There are many acts who you can pick from voice alone, ie Dylan sounds like Dylan from the first word he sings, Joni will always be Joni, but Fleet Foxes manage to do it even before the words come in. The way the chords are constructed, the reverb, the room sound, the intention behind the way the notes are played are so endemic to them that you can pick a Fleet Foxes song just from the first chord. This album Shore is a masterpiece. In classic Robin Pecknold (singer/songwriter) method, it took two years to record, and it sounds and feels like it. I follow Robin Pecknold on Instagram and he’s been pretty open about the recording process, but pretty closed about the release process. Most days for the last two years he’s posted clips of him playing snippets of songs, recording overdubs and messing around in the studio, and this album has slowly unfolded in ten second segments, but this is nothing to hearing the full album in its entirety. Continue reading “On Shore”