Although relating the music of an artist directly to a particular season would greatly undermine its inherent value, there’s no denying that there are songs and albums that can be enjoyed differently whether it’s hot or cold outside. There’s a reason summer playlists exist. Fleet Foxes for me have always been a perfect fall/winter season band. And not only because their beautiful folk arrangements and vocal harmonies transport you. The lyricism Robin Pecknold has exposed is so evocative that all you want to do is sit by a fire and think about stuff.

Shore, Fleet Foxes’ fourth album, was surprised released in the autumn equinox (a day before my birthday) and found me in a little town full of wineyards and pine-tree woods in southwest Germany. What a perfect timing. And not only that, Shore is an album that finds Pecknold dealing with the fragile state of our world and embracing new ways of going forward. The record sounds like Fleet Foxes have found a new invigorating inspiration. And you may think I’m forcing it a bit too much, but I, like everyone, was having a terrible year and it will end with my first trip to Europe. Of all the ways 2020 could’ve ended for me, this certainly makes me look forward in a very different way.

In any case, my enjoyment would’ve occurred anywhere, because this is probably the most immediately enjoyable record from the band. And Shore establishes its stylistic ideas from the start. Opener ‘Wading in Waist – High Water’ is sung by Uwade Akhere, a 21-year-old upcoming singer. The first time Pecknold cedes the main vocals and it comes in an album that is more personal and open for the vocalist/songwriter. It is a clear intro track but it opens the record in an awe-inspiring way. Subsequently first highlight, ‘Sunblind’, helps establishing the atmosphere the album is going to present. This one is a sunny and delicate folk-rock track where Pecknold takes ahold of its groove to pay homage in passionate vocals to late artists that inspired him to make this record. Its music does fill like a ray of sunshine to your face.

From then on, the album unfolds as musical adventurous, with many sounds coming from everywhere, framing with considerable texture Robin Pecknold’s voice, which this time around presents itself unfettered in its reach. The album borrows textures and the fuller sounds Pecknold experimented with, to great results in 2017’s Crack-Up. But where that album find the newly graduated frontman tormented by a bleak persepctive of the world after spending a few years back in college, Shore deals frontward with what challenges him and founds new perspectives that enrich the music in ways seldom seen in past relases.

There’s ‘Jara’ a song that calls to the Helplessness Blues era, which opens with pristine vocal harmonies and then the main riff of echoic guitars gives way to Pecknold’s voice which sounds like its coming from a canyon. The song references Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, killed by the Pinochet regime. But the idea is put through as in ‘Sunblind’, paying a discreet and beautiful homage. This track like many others is carried by vivid percussions and throbbing bass lines, underlining the solid groove that pushes these songs to new heights.

Further in Shore there’s also tender moments and straightforward balladry, not necessarily quiet or restrained. “Featherweight’ is a steady track that strives for hope where you think its gone: ‘And though it’s all so uncertain, cold/All the rafters cracked, all the copper sold/There’s a ration back in a manifold/If you need it or forgot”, lyrics that also callback to Pecknold’s original penchant for remarkable detail. ‘For A Week Or Two’, one of my favorite of the slower tracks, uses vocal harmony as another instrument. The tune is calm and gentle, rivaling a classic Christmas Carol, all the more striking thanks to Pecknold’s unforgettable imagery. However, ‘Maestranza’ comes along and wakes you from the daze with its relentless oomph. The marvelous chorus that reads: ‘Now that a light is on/Now that the water runs and the heartless are nearly gone/No time to get it wrong’, is a heart-pumping climax and one of the most cathartic moments on the whole record.

Influenced by an external cause we all know, and his personal focus in the music, Robin Pecknold recorded, wrote and produced this album almost by himself. A fact that emphasizes the urgency of the journey he courses through its 15 tracks. I figure it was not Pecknold’s explicit intention to make Shore sound so stimulating, but it totally is, and not in the way of pop music that’s inherently happy and catchy and stucks in your head. The songs on the album are crafted so you can actually see where they come from, realize that celebrating life can be done in myriad ways and it maybe must be done, because death is part of it, as he so poetically remarks with the honours he pays to late musicians. And, like in the morphing and superb ‘Cradling Mother, Cradling Woman’, confirming that even in adversity there’s a way through: “Agony, not to me, it’s not defeat”.

In the end, maybe my original thesis was wrong. Yes, Shore assuredly takes Fleet Foxes to new, unexpected places, cementing itself in sounds already succesfully explored in past releases, and the established talents of their frontman, basically sole craftsman of this record. And also, the album is a clear-headed, unpretentious and exquisite reaffirmation of something simple: that even with its comings and goings and highs and lows and the certain fate we all share, life can still be re-imagined. Shore is definitely not tied to a certain season, is an album for every day of the year, every day of this year and it is all sharply summarized in this verse: “And with love and hate in the balance/One last way past the malice/One warm day’s all I really need.” For the moment, in 2020, Shore can be our own excellent sonorous warm day.