There’s no reason to adjust the formula if it’s already great. Fleet Foxes do what they do, and they do the fuck out of it; the whisper-to-thunder transitions, and of course the zillion-part harmonies…they’re always there. They’re always moving. If you like that, then you like Fleet Foxes, every single song. If you are looking for a lot of style-gear shifting, then you are going to be disappointed, every time.

Helplessness Blues, FF’s second full-length and follow up to their wildly popular debut, is in step with that album and their stellar EP work. The band is still doing lush, reverby rounds and soaring choir bursts and hyper-literary songwriting, against layers of acoustic guitar interplay. And it still works so well that it is simply enough that these are new songs using the same palette. H.B. takes about two songs to really even sound like a new album, and not just a bonus track from the self-titled album. But at track three, the Foxes really start sounding like an older, more experienced version of the band we met and loved just a few years ago. All of those same elements combined with the quality of recording have them sounding like they are a few years more mature and while the shift is slight, it is coming from what was an already fantastic, very mature band in 2008.

Recommended track: The breathtaking “Sim Sala Bim” (they had me at the title)