Fleet Foxes
White Winter Hymnal from Grandchildren on Vimeo
Last night went along with Jon, Tyler, and Gary to check out Fleet Foxes, playing at the Venue, a terribly creatively-named joint in a seedy part of town. It turned out to be an interesting evening – got yelled at by a grouchy cop (who rolled down his window to shout at me for taking too long to get out of his way in a gravel parking lot), stood in line for a long time, worried that we wouldn’t get in. Some of the crowd was pretty obnoxious, and there was an interesting episode with a lady had a bit too much of something, and was feeling the music (and nearly falling down).
All that aside, the music was pretty fantastic. I struggle to categorize it. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I don’t have to. Such interesting sounds and methods for making them – in a song early in their set, the lead-guitarist was using a string bass bow to play chords on his electric guitar. And the lead singer was so chill – every time the place was filled by applause, he seemed so shocked – as if to say, “You’re clapping for us? Really? Wow. That’s awfully nice of you!”
So it was a nice time, and I’ll have to look into their tunes more. I’d been trying to remember where I’d heard them first – after the show, I finally remembered that the “White Winter Hymnal” video was on Motionographer a month or too back. So check it out in the embedded video above.
(Nice bonus – someone was handing out free compilation cds at the entrance, which I hung on to all night despite a suspicion that it might totally blow… but so far I’ve been pretty impressed with it. It seems to a label-compilation of indie-folk music. Yes, I said indie-folk. A little different, but so far pretty enjoyable.)