Helplessness Blues
Bella Union
****
When the vocal-harmony-rich act Fleet Foxes showed up on the radar in 2008, there was something reassuring, a "talent will out" certainty, about their rapid transit from obscurity to universal acclaim.
The Seattle band's eponymous debut topped many album-of-the-year lists, but the three-year gestation of the follow-up, Helplessness Blues, has been a fraught affair. One version was shelved, and the frontman Robin Pecknold and his girlfriend Olivia are currently attempting to patch-up a relationship all but destroyed by tensions surrounding Helplessness Blues. Difficult second album? Absolutely.
The good news is that the band have succeeded in making a worthy sequel to Fleet Foxes. Pecknold's lyrics - fantasising about being an orchard owner or beekeeper on the island of Innisfree, as imagined in the poetry of WB Yeats - betray a certain ambivalence about the music business, but songs such as The Shrine/An Argument and Montezuma exemplify the 25-year-old songwriter's enduring knack for beguiling melodies.
At root, Helplessness Blues is an exquisite listen, the band mostly adhering to its tested, reverb-drenched folk-rock and sketching Pecknold's arcadian dream.
