The Quiet Return of Fleet Foxes and Sufjan Stevens

The Pitchfork Review

Pitchfork

Music, Music Commentary, Music Interviews, Music History

3.3 • 844 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2020

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week brought new albums from a pair of beloved artists who emerged a little over a decade ago as purveyors of artful indie folk: Fleet Foxes, who announced their fourth full-length Shore on Monday and released it 24 hours later, and Sufjan Stevens, whose eighth solo album The Ascension arrives today, September 25. Each has navigated listeners’ weighty expectations in their own way: Fleet Foxes by eschewing promotion and embracing the vibrant simplicity of their early songwriting, and Stevens by avoiding the character sketches and personal narratives of his past albums in favor of broader questions about the state of the world. On this episode, Pitchfork Editor Puja Patel is joined by Features Editor Ryan Dombal and News Editor Matthew Strauss for a discussion of both albums and the artists who made them.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Pitchfork review. I'm Pooja Patel, the editor of Pitchfork, and I'm here with our
0:06.2	features editor, Ryan Dombel, and our news editor, Matthew Strauss. Hello. Hey. So it's been a big
0:12.7	week for Pitchfork and for indie heads everywhere. Just a few days ago, Fleet Foxes surprised
0:19.7	released a new album called Shore, and today,
0:22.9	Safian Stevens released his new album, The Ascension. Needless to say, both of these artists are
0:29.3	indie music icons, their staff favorites, and regular best new music contenders, even as their
0:35.1	sounds have evolved significantly over the past decade or so.
0:38.8	Full disclosure, we were super fortunate and got both of their albums a little bit earlier than
0:43.8	everyone else, but it has been extremely hard for us to keep quiet about them.
0:49.8	Ryan, you were here when the first Fleet Fox's EP came out, right?
0:53.3	Yeah.
0:53.6	Do you remember, like, what that era felt like
0:57.5	and how people were reacting to them back then?
1:00.3	Yeah, a little bit.
1:01.1	I remember back then we had a message board,
1:04.5	like an internal message board that you had to be a writer
1:07.2	to post on back when message boards were a thing. And there was a lot of chatter
1:15.9	about Fleet Foxes, this hot new band from Seattle of folk dudes. And yeah, their debut album, self-titled debut album, as well as their Sun Giant EP, which is kind of like their both their breakthrough moment, came out in 2008.
1:39.8	Right.
1:40.3	We combined them to be the number one album of 2008 on Pitchfork, which is quite the honor.
1:48.6	Thinking about it now, I think part of what cut through is here were these guys.
1:54.9	There was no artifice.
	...

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