Fleet Foxes “He Doesn’t Know Why”

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The Echo was packed and humid tonight, but Fleet Foxes managed to make it feel like a campfire congregation beneath the stars. Over gentle guitar picking and an organ undercurrent, the band of bearded men eased into “Sun It Rises,” intoning in a wash of harmony: “Hold me dear, into the night / Sun it will rise, soon enough.” Throughout a set drawing from this year’s Sun Giant EP and self-titled full-length, the Seattle group presented a kind of sacred folk music, in awe of the magnitude of nature and the ephemerality of life. “Days are just drops in the river to be lost always,” they sang in “Drops in the River.” Instrumentally, the band’s pastoral soundscapes and dynamic range bring to mind their contemporaries in Grizzly Bear. Frontman Robin Pecknold’s soaring vocals bear a resemblance to those of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, but when the rest of the Fleet Foxes chime in — as they usually do — the effect is more Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Still, Pecknold proved that he could keep the crowd enraptured on his own with a few solo songs. On the elegiac “Oliver James,” his voice, strong yet unpretentious, filled the room and certainly induced widespread chills. As he stopped strumming and merely tapped the body of his guitar, he cried, “Back we go to your brother’s house, emptier, my dear / The sound of ancient voices ringing soft upon your ear.”

— Thomas McMahon