10th
I decided to give Fleet Foxes the fairest hearing I could….Consequently, I feel like I can now fairly say that the thing I don’t like about them is the vocals. The voices are bland, the harmonies are standard-issue, and the lyrics are horrible. I would like this a lot more if either it was sung by someone with character (indie’s embrace of vocal music always seems to forget how rare and invaluable a strong, distinctive, inventive singer is) and/or if the lyrics were all replaced with “doo doo doos.”
Yeah, I hear you. My feeling about that record is that it’s pleasant, but yes, the vocals are not distinctive OR pretty enough, and that while they write melodic stuff, the melodies are not good enough most of the time. I can imagine that they will eventually write better songs, but I doubt they’ll improve as singers. There a few songs on their album that I think are quite nice and may get around to writing about at some point, but the big problem is that the music feels too generic, and there’s just not enough personality to get me interested.
