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Fleet Foxes at Mohawk
Fleet Foxes’ frontman Robin Pecknold felt compelled to explain his long-sleeve shirt and ski cap, what with it being summertime in Texas and all.
“I feel like I have flabby arms, and I just got an embarrassing haircut,” the skinny, long-haired Seattleite told a sold-out crowd Wednesday at Mohawk.
With hypnotic, extended-jam versions of “Sun Giant” and “Sun It Rises” already under their beards, the fivesome had established themselves as anything but a My Morning Jacket pre-“Z” cover band, a comparison that’s hard to deny after listening to Pecknold’s echo-chamber vocals on their deservedly buzzed-about, self-titled Sub Pop debut.
Now it was time for one of the many random discourses that routinely took place in between songs. Drummer Josh Tillman, a real ham, seized the moment to riff on his trip to Whole Foods earlier in the day.
“Can you ever have too many vitamins?” he queried before dropping into the mock tone of a shopper posed with the grocer’s infinite holistic offerings, and added, “Never heard of this before. Gotta put it in my body.”
Funny business aside, Fleet Foxes resumed with the trifecta of “White Winter Hymnal,” “Your Protector,” and “He Doesn’t Know Why.” In those three songs, the band showed off majestic four-part harmonies that sometimes ascended to the heights of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s as well as an ability to make subtle changes that translated into a multitude of genres, from sweeping epics built for Irish-countryside films to Americanized Buddhist chants to hippified tribal noodling.
For an encore, Pecknold took the stage solo and played the acoustic “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song.” Right before that, though, someone in the audience asked him to take off his ski cap. He begrudgingly obliged.
“See, it’s too short,” he said. “I got it cut too short.” Because of the new, weekday noise ordinance, so, too, was his band’s set.
Click here to view photos from the show.
Comments
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By piano fan
July 3, 2008 5:52 PM | Link to this
I was not at the concert, but I am pretty sure the drummers name is Josh Tillman! Not Nicholas Peterson.
By Michael Hoinski
July 4, 2008 9:46 AM | Link to this
You are correct. I didn’t realize they’d got a new drummer since the album was released.