From using Bruegel’s Netherlandish Proverbs on the cover of its recently released self-titled debut to this animated but still restrained video for "White Winter Hymnal," the Pacific Northwest band Fleet Foxes has a thing for multimedia. It has mixed its sonic genres as ably, assuredly gliding from folk and rock to parts outward with skill and confidence on its first full-length, and garnering praise from either side of the indie divide.
Say what you want about its pastoral name in the age of mesh networking, but just don’t call Fleet Foxes hippies. We’re way past looking backward in the 21st century, and so is the band.
The video argues as much, in its indirect and cool way. A series of motionless men in the wilderness sit in solitude while another spins time backwards, only to lose control of his machine and age them all irreparably.
For a stop-motion experiment, there’s a whole lot of stop and little motion. But come to think of it, what an interesting way to play with the idea of time itself, and expectation as well. Like their avatars in the video for "White Winter Hymnal," Fleet Foxes may be here today and gone tomorrow, and that decision will be made by the hourglass, not music critics looking for the next freak-folk revisionists.
Here’s hoping the band escapes the Sandman with its moving music intact.
Photo: Dan Belisle
