The beard and the wonderful

Wincing like he’s just swallowed a cold dog turd, Robin Pecknold contemplates his least favourite word in the English language.
“Hippy – I don’t think it has any meaning anymore,” the Fleet Foxes frontman proffers, stroking the kind of stoner-dude beard that wouldn’t look out of place in a Haight-Ashbury squat circa 1968. “It means about as much as ‘punk’ means. Today ‘punk’ stands for the most conformist stuff possible. It’s the same with ‘hippy’ - just because someone looks a certain way doesn’t mean they’re a hippy.”

We’re backstage in Nottingham, where Fleet Foxes are midway-way through a sell-out tour which has seen these five harmony-dealing Seattle pastoralists soar to buzz-band status. Sipping coffee in a pokey dressing-room, Pecknold is, for all his protests, a picture of beatnik chic. The beard we’ve already mentioned. He also sports a battered felt hat and plaid shirt. In the pre-show gloom, he could pass for Devendra Banhart’s backwoods-dwelling cousin.
“It’s reductionist to define people by what they wear,” he says wearily when asked whether his sartorial tastes are a reflection of Fleet Foxes’ tie-dyed vintage sound. “I haven’t spent enough time out of Seattle to know what’s fashionable nowadays. It’s not something that interests me.”
He perks up as conversation turns to the band’s musical lineage. Splashed with dreamy melodies, their sound stands in clear debt to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, as well as tapping English folk revivalists such as Fairport Convention.
“David Crosby’s first solo record is amazing,” Pecknold enthuses. “Of all the Crosby, Stills Nash & Young stuff, I like his the best. Some of their other records are a little too polished for me. But that first solo one, it gets me all the time.”
Guardians of the Pacific mid-west folk flame, Fleet Foxes were strictly a locals-only attraction until signing to regional indie powerhouse Sub Pop. Though famed as the label that discovered Nirvana and thus served as midwife to grunge, Sub Pop nowadays charts a mellower course. Indeed, it’s something of a flag-bearer for neo-folksy sounds: in addition to Fleet Foxes, the label is home to Band Of Horses, Comets On Fire and Iron & Wine, acts which in their own way each draw deeply on American rootsiness.
“I think that’s just a reflection of the kind of guy (Sub Pop founder) Jonathan Poneman is. He just puts out bands that he really likes, stuff he’s excited about. There’s nothing on that roster which is really horrible. You can tell that everything on the label they’re really proud of. Plus, it’s local, so you can drop into the office at lunch and just say ‘hey’.”
On their self-titled debut, Fleet Foxes channel their love for English folk and (yes) hippy rock through a lense of post-modern psychedelia. Bucolic tempos yield the floor to delicate swathes of flute and violin; bursts of harmony culminate in nu-gaze drone-outs. Listen all the way through and you start to feel dazed, drugged, exhilarated – cumulatively the experience is almost spiritual.
Says Pecknold: “I sang in school plays and stuff and Christian, our drummer, was in a choir at military school. But mostly, we wanted to recreate the feeling you get when you’re at Christmas dinner and the whole family starts singing, that sense of release and of togetherness.”
As Seattle sons, Fleet Foxes grew up surrounded by grunge and its legacy. But it’s not something that looms very large in their musical universe.
“I was eight when Kurt Cobain died. I don’t have a lot of memories of that time. I remember his death, when everyone was going crazy. But I didn’t go to their shows or anything.”
Do Fleet Foxes feel any degree of kinship with other debutantes who also look beyond mainstream rock music for inspiration?
“I guess what we’re seeing become really popular this year is world music sounding stuff – bands like Vampire Weekend and Yeasayer, where there’s almost a David Byrne influence,” Pecknold concludes. “Everyone’s making the kind of music they were always making. It’s just up to other people to decide whether they like it. I hope nobody’s trying to make music to be the next important thing. That’s certainly not why we’re doing it.

Fleet Foxes is out now on Sub Pop Records