Fleet Foxes Find a Simple, Shared Rhythm on “If You Need To, Keep Time on Me”
In most Fleet Foxes compositions, things start pretty loud and usually got really loud. Hear the jangly blare of “White Winter Hymnal” in your head right now, or the tornado of liturgical “aah”s that kick off “The Plains/Bitter Dancer.” Though the “folk” moniker is often applied, most of the band’s songs feel like musical Big Macs with a touch of Brian Wilson’s “symphony to God”-like ambition, dominated by an urge to make every odd chord pivot and bit of counterpoint as technically beautiful as possible.
In most of the songs by the new, returned Fleet Foxes, the band tacks on new, unexpected sections to their songforms to create contrast, or stacks up new voicings to fill out every inch of their canvas. But “If You Need To, Keep Time on Me,” the latest release from the band’s upcoming album Crack-Up, is immediately most striking because it shies away from their impulses, and stays pretty soft. Lead…