This year, like the previous two, has been a roller coaster for Robin Pecknold. Having avoided Covid since the outbreak of the pandemic, he contracted it right before two weeks of rehearsals for the first Fleet Foxes tour since 2017 began. “It hit me pretty hard, it wasn’t a mild case,” the frontman says, shaking his head. “So I missed the first week and then I showed up and I was so exhausted and so drained still ... I didn’t have my full voice, I was falling asleep in the middle of the day and we were also working with a new drummer and bringing in horns for the whole set. So there were so many variables and unknowns at first. It was like, ‘Who knows how this is gonna go? Who knows if we even sound good? Who knows if we’re all gonna get Covid on the first week of the tour and be out six figures, and just shut the whole thing down?’” He takes a deep breath before breaking into a dazzlingly wide grin. “But by the time we got rolling, it turned into this joyous, heavenly experience. It was quite a turnaround.”
When we speak via Zoom, the 36-year-old is in his rented apartment in New York’s Greenwich Village, where he has lived since 2020. Back then, he moved across the country mid-lockdown to work more closely with Beatriz Artola, who produced the band’s fourth album Shore. It’s where he spent much of the pandemic, quarantining and fretting about finishing the record (which was eventually released one day after being announced in September 2020), and where — like many others — he spent his days perfecting his sourdough baking technique and playing video games. Eventually, Shore’s lyrics were completed during long, solitary drives he would take to upstate New York; an incongruous beginning for an album that ended up being their most emotionally ebullient.
Now, he and his bandmates (reunited, having essentially made Shore without them and instead enlisting the help of New-York-based musician friends such as Chris Bear and Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear) are finally getting to tour those songs. So far, there have been matching tennis outfits, Bee Gees and Strokes covers, and general wholesome merriment all round: movie theatres, sections of baseball stadiums and private pools have been rented for the band and crew on days off. Pecknold says he is conscious of the fact that he’s “putting 20 people kind of in harm’s way for Covid by putting this tour together”, and as a result he’s going “way overboard” with fun stuff to compensate.
One reason that I did take an extended break from making music was not because I hated making music, but because I felt bad for being overexposed
He is also taking proper care of his voice this time around. “I don’t talk on show days, I have a whole routine of dorky stuff that I do for like four hours before the show to get in shape for the show,” he explains. “And that’s paying off in a huge way, both in terms of the show itself and the vocal endurance across the course of the tour; it has resolved a lot of issues. There were some songs that I used to hate playing — not because I hated them emotionally or creatively — but because they were just a b**ch to sing,” he adds, laughing. “They were just awful, so I’d be just dreading them all night. Now that stuff is under control in a much better way. So on a vocalist tip, I’m having the time of my life playing these shows.”
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Even across a computer screen, Pecknold is an eminently likable character, as seemingly open-hearted and thoughtful as his songwriting suggests, prone to long pauses and considerate answers. When I remind him that next year marks the 15th anniversary of Fleet Foxes’ astounding eponymous debut album, he seems genuinely flummoxed.
“That is pretty insane,” he eventually proffers after a long pause. “I mean, I was 22 when that came out, so I’ll be 37 next year. I don’t feel 37. I wonder if part of that is because even though it came out 15 years ago, for me, that album and being involved in music and having a quote-unquote ‘career’ in music has been present for me every single day since then. I’m probably the only person on earth that’s thought about Fleet Foxes every day for the last 15 years. Hopefully,” he deadpans, laughing. “So it doesn’t feel like 15 years ago to me, because it’s always been fairly present to me.”
As humble as Pecknold might be about the influence that Fleet Foxes continue to have on contemporary indie-rock and folk-rock music, he recognises that that record in particular was a landmark of sorts.
“I feel like even though it was trendy at the time, I do feel emboldened a little bit about sort of sticking to a lane of making music that was a little more timeless, or a little less totally dependent on the whims of culture,” he concedes. “I’m noticing the benefits of that now, as I’m getting older. It doesn’t feel like going out and playing a ‘Remember 2008?’ tour; it still feels like those songs are sturdy and they can survive and the quality has been high enough since then that the [live] show feels complete. So I feel proud about that.”
There is a flipside to such consistent success, however, as Pecknold has learned. The band has always been a critical darling, and that is something that he admits infringed upon his mindset in those early days.
“I think the most stressful instance of that was putting out the first album and then having that get the Pitchfork Album of the Year — which meant so much to me, as somebody who grew up reading Pitchfork and was so invested in indie music as a fan for so long. What I took away from that was that there was a right answer to be had, and we had it at that moment,” he says with a bittersweet smile. “And I think that gave me a complex around being able to continue providing the right answer with every subsequent release, you know? But I think, more and more, I’m just accepting of the fact that getting that award was not proof of there being a one right answer at the time, and that the world doesn’t really work that way, and you’ll just drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out.” He shakes his head, smiling. “I also really love that the critical conversation that I’m reading [nowadays] is pretty ... Well, Fleet Foxes is not really getting ‘think-pieced’ any more,” he chuckles. “And that’s quite welcome to me.”
The velocity of their rise was difficult for any twenty-something to handle, never mind one with a prodigious talent for melodic and harmonic arrangements. At the height of the band’s fame, and following the release of their second album, 2011′s Helplessness Blues, Pecknold took time away from music. He enrolled as an undergraduate at Columbia University for three years, before returning to make the tumultuous, experimental Crack-Up, the album that signified a new dawn for the band.
“One reason that I did take an extended break from making music was not because I hated making music, but because I felt bad for being overexposed,” he says, shrugging. “I felt guilty and weird about it. So it’s quite nice to be a little more settled; getting on in years, but still putting on enjoyable shows that people are liking. It feels very healthy.”
I think eight songs on a record is the biggest flex — like King of Limbs
He is still figuring out where the band might go in the wake of the Grammy-nominated Shore, but says that six demos have already been recorded for their fifth record. Playing to live audiences again has helped to gauge what works and what doesn’t, and what direction they might take after their last upbeat, optimism-infused album. The studio environment that the band eventually record in will also play a part; he is looking at “downsizing” and working in a smaller space, having done the last three albums in big-budget spaces.
“Shore was fun because it was 15 songs, and some of them were quite short; they were like miniature chapters, sequenced in a way that felt like an 11-song album. But I think eight songs on a record is the biggest flex — like King of Limbs,” he laughs, referencing Radiohead’s 2011 album. “I think that’s one thing I really want to do, an eight-song album where the last song is like 15 minutes long and the quality has to be so high, song to song. So that seems like a fun challenge, but ... I don’t know.”
Despite dabbling in solo work over the years, the manner in which Shore was made without his bandmates has not inspired him to go down that route again anytime soon. However, solo tours are a possibility at some point, he reveals, having now generated enough Fleet Foxes songs that he can play without a full band to fill a set with.
The whole experience of returning to live music has tied in with Pecknold’s positive mental health in recent times, too. It means that even when fans request songs that were written during an emotionally turbulent time, pinpointing The Shrine/ An Argument as an example, he recognises that “there’s a dissonance in that. It’s like these songs are recompense for hard times, or something — but you [also] don’t want that to cause you to seek out unnecessary difficulty, just so you can have grist for the mill.” He takes a deep breath before breaking into another of those infectious grins. “So ... yeah. I am doing great, and this tour has been a big lift. I’m always just trying to figure out how to be in a good place and still make good music.”
Fleet Foxes play the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks, Dublin, on Sunday, August 28th
