Last night I went & saw Fleet Foxes at the Powerstation (with Tiny Ruins too!) & it was insanely good & so I wrote some words about it:
Oh man, what a good sounding show that was. Loud without being punishing, every instrument occupied & filled it’s own space clearly & brilliantly which is especially impressive when you consider how many different things were going on at any one point in time. From the very outset, with an opening run of songs from their very-good-&-definitely-underappreciated-i-m-o 2017 album Crack-Up Robin & the gang put on a damn near seamless show. Every guitar hand-off was smooth as hell, perfectly timed so they could slip from one song to another without pause.
Personally, & I could tell for sure I’m in the minority here, the newer songs translated best to the live setting, something about hearing all the intricacies & melodies hanging in the air mixed so spectacularly added a lot to their already grand & majestic atmospheres. Don’t get me wrong, I dug all the older songs too but felt like I was missing a necessary connection there that the rest of the crowd (who were wayyy into them to such a larger degree more than the new shit that I felt a little disappointed for the band) clearly had, where I feel like even had I not been super familiar with the Crack-Up material already I would’ve been blown away by how incredible they sounded
Overall though, that was a v good show. The visual backdrops were all insanely stunning, all the band members seemed unfairly talented in every instrument they picked up, the set was a decent mix of older & newer material & ran for a decent amount of time & the crowd was (mostly) fantastic. If yr ever in a position where yr considering going to a Fleet Foxes show (like I was) but not 100% sure, do yrself a favour & do it. Their music sounds not necessarily better but great in a different way than it does on the record in a live environment, they have a stellar visual component to their show & they, at least based on this one show, attract a super passionate crowd which is always fun to be a part of
Extra thoughts not really worth of being fully expanded upon:
- super frustrating that so many people decided it was cool to talk so loudly over the top of Tiny Ruins’ set, what I could make out of their new songs was great but would’ve been cooler if people showed them some respect
- drunk guy trying to get Robin to hear his mangled pronunciation of Aotearoa over the entire crowd shouldn’t be allowed to own a larynx
- v into hearing a crowd singing my name loudly it turns out so hopefully all bands start playing songs with Michael in them
- a thousand blessings to the last 390 bus running not too long after the gig finished & to the driver who was driving last night
REPEATER 
2 thoughts on “Live: Fleet Foxes”