RANT: Why Fleet Foxes drive me nuts

Stephen Bishop's guitar is about to get what's coming to it courtesy of Bluto.

It's nothing personal, but I hate Fleet Foxes. To me the Northwest band of bearded bards represents an arm of indie music (no way we can call it rock) that drives me a little nuts.

I've got nothing against beards or acoustic guitars, hippies or harmonizing. But put them all together and it gets a little tedious. From indie darlings like FF to run-away head-scratcher success stories like Mumford & Sons and their Grammy nomination (I mean, WTF?), there's something just plain old fashioned antediluvian about the whole thing. These finger-picking acoustic poseurs are not much more than a museum-piece schtick recycling of the sounds of Alan Lomax.

Now again, another qualification: I don't hate traditional music. I don't love it, but I don't think there's anything wrong with playing traditional music. I do, however, have a problem with recording that music and passing it off as some sort of glorious new thing (which I guess is really the fault of SubPop and music critics in this instance). This ain't nothing new. It's looking backwards. It's as if uncovering Dylan's pre-electric catalog and aping the records of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are revelatory. There's nothing new about it. It's not discovery. It's history.

Now I know. This is the sort of rant that qualifies me for early admittance to the AARP. A thoughtful criticism of Fleet Foxes -- whose new album Helplessness Blues inspired this rant -- might note the delicious irony of six (there are six of these guys, right? Who knew you needed that many guys in a folk band?) bearded fellas playing acoustic campfire ditties deep within the gut of our new digital age. It's as if they're purposefully assaulting the mash-up age of Twitter and Pandora with mighty swings of their mandolins. Their music is a reaction to the machine, some Pitchfork scribe might say, a simplification of process and a return to the pure. And aren't those beards awesome?

But I can't help the feeling that the whole thing is a ruse. Not so much by the band -- let's face it, if you're going to fake your way through the songwriting process, there are many more lucrative avenues for you -- but by those who peddle the band's songs and buy their anachronistic records by the score. These are the people, these fans, who are creating a marketplace for memorabilia music so they can sip wine in their rustically accented living rooms under the right ambient conditions. This is the kind of music made for sipping a soy latte. In other words, it's a reprehensible sham.

Perhaps if Fleet Foxes were alone I wouldn't mind them so much. But a tour through the SubPop catalog these days uncovers a whole lumberjack-sized musical marketing movement of harmonizing hirsute hipsters -- The Head and the Heart and Chad Vaan Gaalen. There're are other vintage bands out there, too: The Mountain Goats, and the more popular Avett Brothers are some disparate examples, but examples of the same basic backwards movement. As a whole, it's just too much.

The biggest problem I have with this kind of music is that it's music that is very safe in a time and age that is anything but. To me, now is not a time to withdraw to the woods. It's a time for a scouring of the landscape with an eye towards the political process and the growing gap of economic well being of those inside our borders and out. It's a time do defend the well being of our forests and streams. It's a time for suspicion, paranoia and rage and there's a lot music can do to capture and comment on these times, here and now.

That doesn't mean I think every band should be Fugazi or fail. That would be ridiculous. Great art can be about personal reflection. But today is just not the time for a musical movement that serves as a soundtrack for our escape into the past. It's time to deal with today, whether its personal or political. To do otherwise is a retreat. I don't see it any other way, no matter how pretty your harmonies might be.

I love well-put opinions to the contrary. Let me know what you think with a comment.