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Album reviews Music

Fleet Foxes

Rating: NNNN


As well as sharing their penchant for overgrown facial hair, SXSW ones-to-watch Fleet Foxes also take cues from My Morning Jacket’s attachment to heavy reverb (and a knack for sounding as though they recorded at the bottom of a well). Influences are far more vintage, however. Think CSNY on the spine-tingling, precise opening track, an unaccompanied four-part harmonized hymn straight out of some pastoral Southern U.S. chapel.

Preferring elongated vocal rounds, the hirsute Seattle quintet categorically shun the conventional chorus-plus-verse structure. But forget any suggestion of sprawling folk that might suggest. There’s ­noth­ing rambling about these five atmospheric arrangements. Beefing up melodies with sparse bits of banjo, mandolin and guitar and encroaching on classic rock, bluegrass, folk-pop terrain, each track on the EP is a precise, separate entity. Don’t be fooled by its diminutive length either.

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