the hard questions
from maura:
a thought that just flashed across my mind: “whose music would i be able to sit through longer: fleet foxes’ or the pussycat dolls’?”
trying to figure this little battle of the hegemonies out should be fun.
I meeannn … Fleet Foxes, but that’s a conclusion drawn strictly on the basis of the temporal criterion “longer.”
The popularity of Fleet Foxes surprises me because their music, falling as it does under the costumey Indie-Americana trend (see also: Jenny “I’m the new Emmylou Harris” Lewis and Sufjan “voice of my grandparents’ generation” Stevens), isn’t really as relatable as Jenny Lewis’s clever, witty songwriting and lacks the lulling prettiness of Sufjan Stevens.
The fact is that these guys are from Seattle, not the Ozarks. All the Hank Williams influence in the world doesn’t necessarily add up to a convincing, let alone compelling, Americana record. And while I wouldn’t at all call Fleet Foxes pretentious (on the contrary, their earnestness is the hallmark of Indie-Americana’s strange penchant for innocence and nostalgia at a time of unprecedented American vulgarity, corruption, cruelty and crisis), it’s hard for me to stick with something so stylized long enough to evaluate anything like, say, lyrical integrity.
3 years ago