After the Gold Rush

The dust is finally starting to settle around Fleet Foxes. In their
first year signed to Sub Pop records, the young Seattle band saw their
debut LP and EP achieve incredible popularity and acclaim, selling
nearly 150,000 copies in the U.S., another 100,000 in the UK, and
topping several 2008 best-of lists in both countries. They’ve been
embraced by outlets as diverse as Pitchfork and People magazine, and
have garnered a fan base that spans generations. Their lush,
harmony-soaked folk draws from the record collections of their
baby-boomer parents, traditional choral and gospel arrangements, as
well as their contemporaries in the Seattle music scene, resulting in a
sound that is simultaneously timeless and contemporary. Bandleader
Robin Pecknold spoke with The Stranger from a rental house in Port
Townsend, Washington, where he is currently holed up writing new
material.

It’s probably an understatement to say that the last year has been
exciting for you guys. How are you holding up?

I feel like in a way it’s been a really awesome experience, but it’s
also definitely changed us. It would be dumb to say that it hasn’t. I
think I have less confidence now. I feel less sure… I’ve been out
here for like a week trying to write new songs, and it’s all been
frustratingly dumb-sounding to me. It’s weird, because if the old
record had just come out and we’d done a West Coast tour or something,
we would have just started the next record, but now there’s a lot of
personal confusion about what the next record is going to be, and
that’s kind of a downer.

Are there questions about where the sound is going? There was
definitely a big departure from your first self-released EP to the
records you put out on Sub Pop. Do you find yourselves wanting to
switch your sound up, or do you want to stay with the sound that put
you in the spotlight?

I don’t know. It’s weird. I’m coming to the point now where I just
want a really good collection of songs and to not really worry about
the aesthetic direction. We could make the songs more complicated, but
I don’t want to be only intellectually stimulated by what we’re working
on. I don’t want to be validating a song because it’s more complex than
the last song but it doesn’t have any actual feeling in it. So I’m
trying to let go of the impulse to make it more complex. I’ve been
listening to a lot of Dylan and Joan Baez and how those songs can
affect me more than some tech’d-out masterpiece.

Are there any current bands that you’ve been exposed to while
touring in the last year that you think might influence your
songwriting on the next record?

Current bands? I don’t know. I think Animal Collective is really
inspiring but not in a… I don’t want to sound like Animal Collective.
I like that they seem really engaged in their own music in a cool way.
There’s really no clarity in our direction right now. Part of me wants
to do something really classic—not classic qualitywise, but with
a classic aesthetic, where the focus is on the songs. I know all of us
combined could do something really interesting that went beyond that,
so I don’t know… I think it could turn into a lot of different
stuff.

Is there going to be more of an effort to spread the songwriting
duties out between the other band members? Or do you usually bring the
song skeletons to the table and then the rest of the band flesh them
out?

I’m not really sure how that’s going to work out. I think that Josh
[Tillman] and Christian [Wargo] are both really rad songwriters, and
Casey [Wescott] has been writing some of the new harmony stuff, which
is more theoretically complicated since he went to school for music
theory. He’s got a ton of cool harmony ideas, lots of stuff that I
could never come up with. Josh just finished a new album that sounds
really awesome, and Christian has been working on like 50 songs that
are really cool. I don’t know how they feel about it, I don’t know if
they want to… I don’t know. I think if we did sit down and write
together, it would definitely be a collaborative effort and not like,
“This is my song, this is my song, this is your song,” or whatever.

You rented a house in Port Townsend to write the new record. Have
you been spending a lot of time there since you’ve been off the road
for a while?

We did a little two-week tour a couple weeks ago and we went to
Australia and the UK, but that’s the only touring we’ve done this year.
Other than that we’ve been here working on new stuff, getting recording
gear set up. I’m the only one staying here right now, but everyone else
has come by to work on stuff, and we still have a practice space in
Seattle that we use too.

You had a lot of big breaks in 2008, but it seems like the first one
was at last year’s Sasquatch!, when the National couldn’t make it and
you got to play a second set in front of a sold-out main-stage crowd.
Did you feel at the time like that was a sign of more good things to
come?

It was crazy, because that was our first show with the band as it is
now. We did one tour before that with a different drummer, but
Sasquatch! was Josh’s first two shows. It felt like a debut of a
certain kind. It felt like there was a lot of serendipity last year, in
terms of how things went down. Having a band’s van break down so we
could play again, you know?

Yeah, your first set was on the main stage as well, but you were the
first band of the whole weekend so nobody was really going to get to
see you.

Yeah, it was probably the first of the many weird serendipitous
moments of the year that helped us out a ton.

After that, you guys did pretty much the entire festival circuit
last year. How do you feel Sasquatch! matches up to the other national
and international festivals?

I think it is definitely well put together. For bands, the thing you
remember a festival by is the stage sound, and it’s almost always weird
because you’re outside and the sound just disappears into the fuckin’
air, so all you’re possibly hearing is what’s coming from the monitor.
I know that’s always the thing I’m bummed or excited about at the end
of the festival show, and that’s why they’re usually nerve-racking or a
nightmare. If you’re up there and the first song sounds terrible, you
have to fight through it for an hour. At Coachella I felt really bad
after the show because it was so hard to get into it because of the
stage sound. I know that’s wimpy, but… eh.

What were your favorite festivals that you played, since you’ve done
pretty much all of them now?

Sasquatch! was really good. It all depends on how much time you have
to set up. Like, at the Pitchfork Festival we had an hour to set up
since they had alternating main stages, so we got to do sound check and
line check, and it ended up being really awesome because usually you
have like 15 minutes.

Out of the big highlights last year, like playing Letterman and
Saturday Night Live, what would you say was the most exciting thing to
happen to the band?

I think Saturday Night Live was the most… it felt really final. It
was the last thing we did before taking a break. It was a bizarre
endcap on a very bizarre year. All the cast was really sweet, it felt
like they were really happy to have us there… It felt like the cast
members were part of the reason we were there, and that felt really
awesome.

Yeah, it definitely seems like when an indie band plays that show
it’s because the people who are putting it on want the band to be
there, not because they have to.

Totally, that felt good. And I was glad we got to play “Mykonos,”
because it was a song from the EP. They were really cool about letting
us have some say in what songs we did. It was so weird. All of that
stuff seems like someone else’s life or something, and then you have to
go home and try to be yourself again.

Now that you’re back and you’ve got the pressure of the next album,
would you say that it’s bearing down on you or is it something that’s
just in the background?

There’s a little bit of uncertainty, a little bit of feeling like
you’re lost at the moment, you know? Not like in what’s going to happen
with the band, but like, when are we going to do whatever it is we’re
going to do? Part of me thinks that people don’t really need another
record from us any time soon, ’cause we were kind of in people’s faces
a lot last year.

Has Sub Pop given you any sort of timeline for when they want the
next one?

No, they’ve been awesome. They’re kind of down for whatever, because
when we first were putting out the record there was like six months
between when we finished it and when they put it out, and then they
wanted the next one to come out eight months after that but obviously
that didn’t happen because we were so busy. So they pretty much told us
we can put it out whenever; I don’t think they’re relying on us at
all.

It says on your show listing online that after September you’re not
playing any more shows until the new record is done. Are you going to
use the festival shows this summer to try out new material live?

We played two new songs on the last tour we did, and I think they
both still need a little work at home. I don’t know what will be ready.
There are a bunch of songs for the next record, it just depends on…
you know… deciding which ones are going to be songs of ours.

Do you try to write new material on the road or do you wait until
you’re home?

I think it’s good to be thinking about it when you’re on tour, but I
remember last year, once we got into the thick of touring, it was like
being in this weird cocoon where you’re just waiting for it to be over
with, you know, just ’cause you’re so… disconnected. Instead of going
on tour and your life stopping and then starting back up again when
you’re done, I want to think of tour as just being a part of your
ever-flowing life, you know? Like, you have to put everything else on
hold just because you’re on tour, and that takes a little bit of effort
to shut off. You get in show mode. At this point we’ve done stuff on
tour that turned out to be cool, but it’s easier when you’re home and
you have a day or two to only do that.

Are there any comparisons that you get or descriptions that music
journalists use that you can’t stand?

No, I think most of them are pretty fair. Well, I mean, I think
mostly they’re pretty fair. I feel pretty good about the EP,
personally, a little bit better about the EP than about the record.

Like in terms of what people said about it?

No, just in terms of the EP. The only reason I bring that up is
because of the people who have said “country music” or whatever, but I
don’t really hear… I don’t think that was the intention.

What about the phrase “Ren faire?” How do you feel about words like
that?

I would consider us more “country” than “Ren faire.” I get why
they’re saying that—there’s that same feeling of what was going
on in those Zombies or Judee Sill records, that sort of old-music
sounding stuff. There’s some of that, I don’t know. And I like that
stuff. I would be more uncomfortable with it if I felt like we were
trying to present a false reality or something. None of us are taking
on “Robin the Lionheart” pseudonyms or wearing corsets or whatever.

When you’re talking to someone and they haven’t heard your band, how
do you describe what it sounds like?

I usually just say… uh… what do I usually say? I say it’s like
folky music, I guess. I just try to stop talking about it as soon as
possible.

Fair enough. Speaking of false realities, do you like Lord of the
Rings?

I do. I do like Lord of the Rings.

Last summer at Capital Hill Block Party I wrote about this epiphany
I had when I saw you—that if we were living in Middle Earth, your
band would be elfin minstrels from the woods of Lorien. Since I
consider myself a half-dwarf, half-hobbit, it would make sense that I
liked your band so much. Do you consider yourself an elf? Do you think
you guys are making elf music? Or am I totally wrong here?

Elf music… I don’t know…

What do you consider yourself?

I think I’m an Istari, is that what it is? The proper word for the
wizard race… the race that came down from fucking… wherever. Elf
music? I don’t know. I feel like Lord of the Rings elf music would be
far more beautiful than anything we, or any human, could replicate. It
would be like three octaves higher than Mariah Carey.

It’s weird because I consider Christian a man. He is purely a
man.

Christian is a man, yeah. Skye [Skjelset] is an elf, I think.
Christian is a man, Josh is an orc… I feel like me and Josh are the
orcs. Yeah, and Casey is an ent. It’s a definite Fellowship.

If there was one thing about the last year you could do over or
change, what would it be?

I actually got the chance for a do-over. When we were on Letterman,
my guitar came unplugged for the last verse of the song. The pickup was
dangling, the cord came out of the pickup jack, the shitty pickup for
the acoustic guitar, and I was super, super bummed. It came unplugged
for the entire last verse of the song. So after we were done I just
left and went on a walk and like wanted to kill myself, and then my
sister called and I told her it came unplugged and she said that I
could come back and fix it in the studio downstairs, so I ran back.
There was only like 20 minutes to do it because they were filming
another show that day, so I ran back and they mic’d the guitar cab, and
I got a redo. It was horrible, that sinking feeling before, but yeah,
there’s an overdub on the Letterman.

Is there anything you didn’t get a chance to do over that you wish
you could have?

There was this one TV show, the Jools Holland show on the
BBC—that was really hard. They had to have everything really
quiet in the monitors for the microphones, and there was no PA that you
could hear yourself back on. We did “White Winter Hymnal” and at the
beginning of the song I guess I forgot to play the guitar along, I just
went into it, and so we did the harmony that starts the song, and then
we went into the other part in a different key from the harmony. So
that was pretty embarrassing and awful, and that was live on TV.

Imagine you could design the rest of your musical career, how would
you map it out?

Map out the rest of the career?

You know, in generalities.

I don’t know, I really, really want to do another record that we
feel good about, you know, more stoked on…

And then put out three that you just hate?

Three that are just kind of a cash grab, yeah. Then break up the
band, do the McDonald’s commercial. Just get the money. No, I think
that if anything our intentions are to take it down a notch, in a way,
becoming more sustainable. I don’t think we’ll ever match the success
of the first one. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think we’ll ever make a
better record. I just don’t think it will be as… whatever that one
was to people. It would be cool to continue sustainably. It would also
be nice to live an actual human life for a while. Have some time in
between records to get our ducks in a row. That’s kind of how I see
records anyway; it’s summing up whatever you were just doing. And right
now I wouldn’t want to listen to a record about what we’ve been doing
for the last year. I don’t find music about musicians compelling at
all. It’s kind of a weird place to be in.