Album Review: Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up

After six years of waiting, Robin Pecknold and band return for the much-anticipated third album. Crack-Up continues seamlessly from 2011's Helplessness Blues with their trademark harmonies and layering techniques that the band turned into their own sub-genre of folk over a decade ago. Lead track Third Of May / Odaigahara's uplifting melody is not indicative of the rest of the album, which takes its time to sink in, but this is another superb effort from Seattle's finest purveyors of Gregorian chant. One can't help shake the feeling that On Another Ocean (January/June) was somehow influenced by the success of the band's former drummer, and vice versa and notwithstanding, the record was well worth the wait.

Fool's Errand's minimalist approach reminds us what a choir of men can achieve with nothing more than some voices and a lap-steel, and despite being toward the second half of the album, continues the quality from the first half. Similarly, the title track and final song (at six minutes plus) neatly summarises that although the band aren't willing to compromise their style, they are masters of a type of music that is difficult to replicate and is a reminder that this is still a quintessential Fleet Foxes album through and through.