The Shrine / An Argument from Sean Pecknold on Vimeo.
PREVIOUSLY: It is well known that the Fleet Foxes look like lumberjacks and sing like angels, but less known is that live, they play like a band that made a deal with the devil at the crossroads. If you loved their 2008 self-titled LP but were a little underwhelmed by the new Helplessness Blues, you should have been at the Tower Theater on Saturday night, because those same songs blared loudly with the kind of heat, friction, and true grit sorely lacking on the recording. The moral of the story, I suppose, is that sometimes the difference between good and great is more midrange. The hirsute Seattle six-piece is largely acoustic and traffics in autumnal ’60s folk-rock and sun-dappled three-part harmonies that can be deadly in the wrong hands; Saturday they managed to stay on the right side of preciousness. MORE