Helplessness Blues was one of the most anticipated and critically acclaimed records of 2011, and it certainly is impressive. The songs are composed of gorgeously rendered tapestries of Americana, musically and lyrically brimming with richly colored imagery. Yet what is most admirable about this record is its unexpected maturity and Robin Pecknold's uncommonly thoughtful writing, especially for a 25-year old.
Helplessness Blues unfolds and carries a well-rendered narrative from beginning to end, though some of the individual tracks here are less distinct than those found on Fleet Foxes. After listening to this record dozens of times, I would still be somewhat hard-pressed to remember quite how "Sim Sala Bim" or "Lorelai" or "Bedouin Dress" sound exactly. I wouldn't necessarily say that a handful of things songs are filler, but a few aren't particularly memorable.
Still, this is one of 2011's best-recorded LP's, and the sounds here are pretty impeccable. The depth of the soundstage on "Montezuma" makes you feel as if the song is being performed right in front of you. It sounds like Robin is singing while he sits in the chair next to you, while the rest of the group sings the back-up harmonies outside the window. And then those warbling electric guitar bathes the song in a comforting, warm haze. The wide range of instruments are recorded and mixed so perfectly that I'm left with the feeling that more instrumental segments and further dialing back of the harmonies would be appreciated.
However, there are some commendable exercises in restraint here. The band rarely goes for the easy emotional peak with melodramatic string arrangements, and the record as a whole is less reliant on the prettiness of the harmonized vocal set pieces. Instead, Helplessness Blues favors hushed, subtler routes that focus the listener's attention simply because there are many moments of uncommon quiet. "Someone You'd Admire" and "Blue Spotted Tail" rely chiefly on the combination of Pecknold and an acoustic guitar, while "The Plains / Bitter Dancer" never gets terribly loud, but still shows off some brilliant dynamics. The song slowly approaches behind a mesmerizing two-bar melody; as soon as it finally comes fully into view it nearly disappears, leaving behind a single acoustic guitar. This is a complex song but it doesn't feel like it; the easy-going tempo and sighing vocal and flute melodies give the song an accepting tranquility. It truly is one of the masterpieces of the record, a simple song that seems to be about the inevitable arrival of death, a fact of nature "just as the sand made everything round" and "the tar seeps up from the ground."
It's Pecknold's writing that takes this album places. He has a new-found awareness of the world around around him and while there are still times when the flowery imagery is perhaps a bit much, there is a lot beneath the surface here. Pecknold's songwriting has always looked at the world with a great amount of wonder, but here he takes time ponder its inner-workings and his place in it. "So now I am older / Than my mother and father / When they had their daughter / Now what does that say about me?" he wonders in the opener, while in "Lorelai" he quite bluntly states "So, guess I got old / I was like trash on the sidewalk." It's something many of us in our twenties finally realize: we will eventually get older and weaker and more useless. Helplessness Blues pauses to ask why the world works the way it does and wonders what part we play in it. But it also realizes that those questions don't often have clear answers.
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