I Can’t Stop Loving You
The opening “single” from the second Fleet Foxes album was given away free on the band’s website so I’ve been listening to it for most of this year… and I’ve yet to tire of it. It may well be the most beautiful song I’ve heard all year – a mini-symphony of Simon & Garfunkel-esque pop that changes pace midway to deliver a blissful fantasy of the songwriter’s idea of a perfect life.
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m raw
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store
In the context of the song, this is a romantic idyll the singer is concocting for his estranged lover… but if you take away the romance, it becomes a dream of escape. Listen to this lyric during your daily commute to the 9-5 workaday drudge and you can’t help but think “what if…?”
Perfect Imperfect
Before we arrive at this sublime moment of introspection though, ‘Helplessness Blues’ provides another moment of flawed beauty that always stops me in my tracks. The song opens thus…
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes
Unique in each way you can see
…and that clumsy repetition of “unique” never fails to distract me. At first I thought it bad writing, but the more I hear it, the more I think it’s intentional. Lead Fox Robin Pecknold is a skilled enough wordsmith to come up with an appropriate synonym; by choosing instead to repeat “unique”, he casts doubt on the very definition of the word. He makes it stand out, and in doing so, says “actually, you’re not as unique as you think”. Without actually saying that.
That’s my interpretation anyway. You probably think I’ve spent far too long worrying about this one lyric, and you could well be right. But that’s just the way I’ve always responded to pop songs. It’s too late to change now.
Yer Blues
Beyond the title track, Helplessness Blues offers a dozen more lovingly crafted harmonic gems, guaranteeing a return on your investment if you like the sound of the free sample above…
