live music

Editor's rating

Venue: Leeds Academy
Gig played: 28 June 2009

Since Fleet Foxes' self-titled debut album was released last June, the band have enjoyed a year of rapidly increasing popularity and critical acclaim. The bearded minstrels are currently on an epic tour for the rest of the year and tonight hit an eager Leeds Academy.

The packed venue feels almost church-like as the congregation stands silently, completely absorbed by the beautiful harmonies floating from Robin Pecknold and his band. 'Sun It Rises' opens by evoking images of a chain gang singing as they work, before the tune takes on a more Simon and Garfunkel-style mellowness. 'Heard Them Stirring' arrives like a medieval chant with pitch-perfect harmonies that are so finely-honed as to be indistinguishable from the ones on the record.

The Seattle-based group have been compared to the Beach Boys, Animal Collective and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Tonight they also show similarity to Arcade Fire in 'White Winter Hymnal' as the crowd shows genuine appreciation for this musical gem.

There are touches of classical influence in tracks like 'Tiger Mountain Peasant Song' and heavy Neil Young touches in 'Mykonos'; the band's most recent single from the 'Sun Giant' EP. Predictably, it has the audience enchanted.

Fleet Foxes are clearly a hard-working band and their efforts are being rewarded. This is an outfit of real quality, playing their poignant and affecting songs with true beauty.

Sam Butterworth