Before Fleet Foxes release their much-anticipated debut full-length this summer, the country-heart band drops down Sun Giant EP. The five-piece may hail from Seattle (also home to their label, Sub Pop), but they’ve got the soul of the backwoods South. And it’s an old soul, despite their youth, though the band can get a little trapped in the past.
“Sun Giant” opens the EP, a pretty, choral hymnal. While not to everyone’s taste, it lays down who and what Fleet Foxes are. Things get stronger with the echoing, more country-time “Drops in the River”, which reaches an epic nature at times. “English House” is higher and sweeter, but with a country-twang backbone.
Tops on Sun Giant is “Mykonos”, a wistful country-drive that carries the listener along. You can hear singer Robin Perknold’s character echo through the piece. “Innocent Son” finishes the EP off on a country-sad warble.
Currently on tour with fellow northwesterners (and label-mates) Blitzen Trapper (QRO live review), Fleet Foxes play it a little sadder than those freak-folksters. While the fivesome certainly aren’t hippies (the title to their article in Seattle’s The Stranger newspaper), sometimes they get mired in an even more distant time and place, when folk and beards were for sons of the soil, not sons of The Dead. Unusual, even original (in its way), Sun Giant certainly stands out.
