Lovin' Live Music

This column was printed in the September 29 issue of Flagstaff Live.  Check out the original issue here.

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There’s nothing quite like live music.  I’m a little late to this party, I suppose.  It seems that everyone in this town loves live music, and attends shows of some variety pretty regularly.  After I lingered for many years believing that most new music pales in comparison to many of the great bands of my youth, I’ve just started to enjoy a lot of new music, mostly on the indie scene.  This has led me to a few concerts in the last year, where my previous concept of live music (poor sound quality, too many people and their colorful body odor, plus bad domestic beer spilled on your back) has taken a turn for the better.

It all began last year when, after an epiphany, I decided to go out of my way to have more fun.  Item #1: travel to Los Angeles, see Arcade Fire in concert, and have my mind blown.  Mission accomplished.  I was hooked.

Now, I’m trying to see as many shows as I can.  Last week, I went to see Fleet Foxes play in Phoenix.  From Seattle, Fleet Foxes might be called a “folk rock” band, as they string vocal harmonies with an impressive array of instruments, sometimes sounding like a modern version of Crosby, Stills and Nash, but mostly carving a unique sound all their own.  It’s clear right from the start that they are musicians, not showmen.  They walk onto stage and simply begin playing music.  There’s no flash, no big light show, nor do the band members dance or strut around the stage.  They simply play their music with passion.

They opened the concert with the song, “The Plains / Bitter Dancer” from their latest CD, Helplessness Blues.  Most songs in popular music give you some variation of the same standard format: A-B-A-B-C-A-B.  Even the most inventive songs still follow that pattern, or some similar layout that takes a couple of musical ideas and repeats them, with one transition before the final climactic finish, which repeats the original idea.  Fleet Foxes, however, don’t play this game quite as often, rarely coming back to an idea in a song once they’ve moved on.  “The Plains / Bitter Dancer” is an excellent example.  It builds with a beautiful intro of voices in harmony that rise and rise in flowing intensity, and sounds more like choral music than rock.  Then the song shifts gears and sounds like you’d expect a folk rock band to sound.  But the ninety degree turns don’t end there: the song shifts again, with haunting vocal chanting and a steady build of beat, guitar and bass into a rising climax.  The song doesn’t return to any of the two original movements; it moves forward creatively.  It’s unlike anything I’ve heard.  Live in concert, this movement is enough to bowl me over.  I literally swoon.

And that’s just the first song.  Their set gets stronger from there.  One highlight was their performance of “White Winter Hymnal,” a song so rich with vocal harmony that it’s been covered by a cappella groups across the country (I recommend checking YouTube to see the version Sonos performs).

Lead singer Robin Peckhold’s lyrics can, at times, be vulnerable and beautiful.  In their performance of “Helplessness Blues”, the title track for their latest CD and the finale for their concert last week, Peckhold sings passionately about his place in our crazy world, struggling between being a “unique snowflake” or a “functioning cog” in a larger machinery.  He eventually comes to this conclusion: “I’m tongue-tied and dizzy / If I know only one thing / It's that every thing that I see / of the world outside is so inconceivable / often I barely can speak.”  The song builds to this point with vocal harmonies and a guitar, and then shifts in another direction both lyrically and musically.  Peckhold then sings, “If I had an orchard, I’d work ‘til I’m sore’ with passion and longing that is palpable.  I find this lyrical shift as remarkable as their musical turns.  He transforms a song that is intellectual and existential, without answer, into a poem of longing that comes down to a simple, lovely dream.

I had loved this song before I saw Fleet Foxes live.  Their performance, and specifically Peckhold’s emotional delivery, brought that love to another level.  Since the concert, I haven’t been able to stop listening to their music in the office, the deluxe memory of their show ripe in my mind.

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John 'JT' Tannous
Executive Director