Fleet Foxes just released their excellent new album Crack-Up, a follow-up to their 2011 critically-acclaimed album Helplessness Blues. After the six year hiatus, the band have been warmly received upon their return, which has coincided with the return of many other ’00s indie bands from that era, as Steven Hyden and I discussed on his Celebration Rock podcast this week. Hyden found the album to be a wonderful respite from the current era, and evocative of the earlier Obama era, when America was in a totally different space.
Today, it’s frontman Robin Pecknold’s turn to be on a podcast; he’s appeared on the well-known Song Exploder show to unpack one of the tracks off Crack-Up, “Mearcstap.” According to Pecknold, he wanted the song to feel like “feel like a Beach Boys song with a Can song being played on top of it.” Specific! Listen above for more insights from him on the songwriting process.
One cool thing he did during the era he wrote this song was skip out on his undergraduate finals to go on tour with Joanna Newsom. Responsibility be damned, what will you remember better, a bunch of tests and grades or a tour with one of the best musicians currently working?
