Releasing an album in the thick of the pandemic has proven to be a precarious exercise. For Fleet Foxes, the band released Shore, their spectacular fourth album, in September of 2020, when the state of the world was very much in flux and things like an album tour seemed as far off in the distance as possible. But on the winter solstice of 2020, frontman Robin Pecknold still found a way to play his music for fans: a carefully-planned performance at Brooklyn’s St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church, which was livestreamed to the world.
In a solo-focused acoustic performance, Pecknold coursed through not only songs from the now-Grammy-nominated Shore, but also from the band’s whole catalogue. It was “me by myself on the longest night of the year… honoring the loneliness of 2020 with a nylon string and some songs new and old,” Pecknold described in a statement. Now the performance will live on in A Very Lonely Solstice, the first ever Fleet Foxes live album, out this Friday, December 10th.
Among the acoustic arrangements on the release, the all-female/non-binary Resistance Revival Chorus join Pecknold for Shore’s “Wading In Waist-High Water” and “Can I Believe You,” and there’s also a cover of Nina Simone’s “In The Morning” in the 13-track set. The filmed recording of the album will also be up on YouTube this Friday, along with a Q&A with Pecknold and host Elia Einhorn via YouTube Premium.
Check out the A Very Lonely Solstice artwork and tracklist below.
1. “Wading In Waist-High Water”
2. “Sunblind”
3. “In The Morning”
4. “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”
5. “Maestranza”
6. “Helplessness Blues”
7. “Silver Dagger”
8. “Featherweight”
9. “A Long Way Past The Past”
10. “Blue Spotted Tail”
11. “If You Need To, Keep Time On Me”
12. “I’m Not My Season”
13. “Can I Believe You”
A Very Lonely Solstice is out 12/10 via ANTI- Records. Pre-order it here.
