When a band ends a six-year hiatus, there are bound to be high expectations for the new music that breaks the silence. For Robin Pecknold, principal songwriter of Seattle indie-folk group Fleet Foxes, that expectation came from himself for the most part.
“I think part of the reason it took so long to make was because it felt like it needed to do a lot of things at once, or I thought it did, you know?” Pecknold says. “Because it had been so long of a gap, I didn’t want to come back with something completely different.”
Working on Fleet Foxes’ latest full-length, “Crack-Up,” certainly felt like making a third record, he says. The songs had to touch on places that the band went on its previous two albums—the 2008 self-titled and its Grammy Award-nominated follow-up, 2011’s “Helplessness Blues.”
More importantly, Pecknold says, it had to do that in a fresh way. This was a revitalized Fleet Foxes, after all.
“Crack-Up” hit shelves in June 2017, more than six years after “Helplessness Blues.” For fans, it felt like he simply disappeared, but Pecknold says he continued writing and playing music outside the Fleet Foxes realm, including touring solo and writing the score for the off-Broadway play “Wyoming.” During that span, he also attended the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York City.
“I worked on music the whole time, but I had all this other stuff I wanted to do,” he says. “… It seemed like everyone else involved was kind of in the right spot to be working on (a new Fleet Foxes record), or had done their own projects and were ready to do this again. It just seemed like the timing was right. In a way, it hadn’t been for a while. … Had it happened sooner, I would’ve wanted to go for it a little sooner, you know? Looking back, I wish it hadn’t been such a long gap.”
A lot of good came from that six-year space for the band’s other musicians, though. Skyler Skjelset toured as the supporting act for dream-pop band Beach House; Christian Wargo put out music under the name Poor Moon and revived his previous band, Crystal Skulls; Casey Wescott served as a studio musician on many projects; and Morgan Henderson joined folk band The Cave Singers. The band’s former drummer, Josh Tillman, quit shortly after the “Helplessness Blues” tour and established his solo career as Father John Misty.