Fleet Foxes make long wait worth it

Fleet Foxes’ “Crack-Up” doesn’t just grab your attention – it gives the senses a full-body massage.
Produced by leader Robin Pecknold and Skyler Skjelset, who appears on all 11 tracks but one, the band’s third album isn’t far removed from 2011 predecessor “Helplessness Blues,” although the shades are more varied here, the hues deeper, the in-song transitions multiplied, the themes wider and the arrangements both more precious and adventurous.
Some musical and lyrical references may seem taken from an updated “Rock Snob’s Dictionary” – Igor Stravinsky, Beowulf and F. Scott Fitzgerald – but they are at the service of the songs, not the other way around.
Echoes of Lee Hazlewood and Talk Talk are also in the grooves and there are some progressive and jazz touches. The foundations, however, are still deep in folk-rock and Pecknold’s spiraling vocals bathed in reverb usually set to “Gregorian chant.”
Pecknold, who spent part of the extended sojourn between albums at Columbia University, finds room to address seemingly personal issues as well as the band’s situation.
Current events also have their place and the title cut and album closer reacts to the fake news phenomena – “When the world insists that the false is so” – while “If You Need To, Keep Time on Me” asks “Who knows what State is in store?”
The array of instruments beyond the horns and strings is so extensive – from prepared autoharp and a Moog Minitaur to an electric harpsichord and a swinging door – that you feel some elements more than hear them.
Rewarding, involving and meticulous, “Crack-Up” has been well worth the wait.
- By Pablo Gorondi
Associated Press
Steve Earle bills his new album, “So You Wannabe An Outlaw,” as the philosophical heir to “Guitar Town,” and the DNA connecting it to that landmark 1986 record can’t be missed. Texas-born and Nashville-raised, at least musically, Earle reconnects with his roots in all the best ways.
Earle has ranged around musically for three decades without losing his ability to nail a great song. During that time he has arguably written the definitive song on the death penalty (“Billy Austin”), America’s economic divide (“Down Here Below”) and Middle East peace (“Jerusalem”), among other masterpieces, all without losing his bearings.
Now he goes back to Texas to revive the muscular style he modeled on Waylon Jennings and other legendary outlaws. But he sounds, as always, like nobody but … Steve Earle.
The journey back is as good as anything he’s put out in a decade or more.
Earle is backed on the album once again by the Dukes, the rocking little combo that supported much of his best work and delivers in fine form here. Miranda Lambert, Willie Nelson and Johnny Bush make appealing cameos.
The capstone is “Goodbye Michelangelo,” a poignant tribute to Guy Clark, a fellow Texan and songwriting mentor to Earle and many others, who died in May.
Earle at his best rocks intensely, fearlessly confronts inner demons and wears his heart on the outside. This album, full of flaming arrows from a seemingly limitless quiver, does it all with gusto.
- By Scott Stroud
Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Glen Campbell’s last record, “Adios,” is a swan song for the ailing Grammy-winning performer and TV personality, but his daughter said the recording was also therapeutic for him as well.
Campbell, known for his hits such as “Wichita Lineman” and “Gentle on My Mind,” was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011. His farewell tour was captured in an Oscar-nominated documentary called “Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.” But shortly after the tour ended in 2012, Campbell’s family knew he might never get another chance to record.
Ashley Campbell said her father had so much joy being in the studio again. He is now 81 and in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She said her father can no longer speak, but that he is happy in a facility in Nashville.