Seattle’s Fleet Foxes have always felt like they were meant for something bigger. When the folk sextet first made a splash in 2008, I caught them at a tiny room in New Orleans. Three years later, they’ve played Saturday Night Live, topped critics lists and on Sunday night, they sold out all 3,700 seats inside DAR Constitution Hall.
And while the crowds have grown much larger, they’ve replaced the intimacy of those early shows with musical firepower. With a majority of the set dedicated to Helplessness Blues, the band ran through the stronger material from their sophomore release, while peppering the set with of the hits from their self-titled debut and Sun Giant EP.
Throughout the night, the band easily reproduced the songs from those painstakingly produced albums. Instrumental opener “The Cascades” with its transition into album closer “Grown Ocean” was a pleasant surprise, but didn’t deliver the heft the album versions due to a muddy mix instead of poor delivery, but from “Drops In The River” on the mix was crystalline.
When he was not thanking the audience profusely, singer Robin Pecknold was charming and self-deprecating — he greeted the audience with “Welcome to the America Dome” and was met with equal parts laughter and applause — between songs where the band killed all noticeable momentum with elongated tuning sessions. But the tuning breaks are only a minor gripe.
Given the size of DAR, one would expect pockets of chatter, but the silence and patience was as remarkable as the band’s otherworldly harmonies. That polite hush was met with rapturous applause as the sextet ripped through the much requested “Mykonos”, as well as fan favorites “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”, “White Winter Hymnal” and “Ragged Wood”.
The Fleet Foxes ended their proper set with “Blue Ridge Mountains” — a song the band has perfected — which was only topped by the intriguing encore closer “Helplessness Blues”. It was a weird choice, especially for a song that was the lead single behind the album the band is touring, but as the song opened up from its black and white guitar strum into a technicolor middle third, the audience which was seated throughout the set, jumped to their feet to close out the night. Given the band’s outstanding performance, we should have been standing the whole time.
