Random Review: Fleet Foxes.

I had a spontaneous last minute invite to hear Fleet Foxes at the opera house last night. I knew they were coming there but I'm not a super big fan, just a general liker. Last minute tickets are wonderful, but I'm not very good at changing my plans at the last minute so I almost said no. It was 6.30, an hour and a half before the music started, and I was still at the office, having just done Jillian, tired and smelly and hungry, with a MASSIVE load of washing at home and a scarily depleted underwear drawer. First I tried to catch the bus home for a quick shower and throw the washing in the machine, but there was a 20 min wait, so I trotted back to work and washed up as best I could and put my work clothes back on, then caught the bus straight in to Circ Q. I bought a schnitzel wrap cut in half to share with D, and some hot chips to eat while waiting for her. I saw 2 people on scooters like mine scoot on to a ferry! Ah cool.

I was wondering if there would be a support act. A gig at the opera house, would it be casual or what? And actually at 8pm the FF walked on stage and started playing. Odd.

I'm not familiar with most of their songs, but they are foot tapping good. They played the few I knew about half an hour in. They had a lot of instruments, there are 6 of them, and they do a lot of swapping piano to flute, guitar to weird slide thing, double bass to violin, bass to shakers. The singing and harmonising were unbelievably good. They have the same sound quality on stage as on the albums, the sort of echoey 'singing in a pedestrian underpass' sound, only bigger and louder. They had long awkward pauses between songs to tune, sometimes there was banter but mostly they didn't bother, they seem pretty shy really, playing in the dark as much as possible.

So this is them, or plasticine version of them, for your enjoyment. (2.5 min long)