Robin Pecknold

Fleet Foxes’ architect Robin Pecknold
on Brian Wilson’s Influence.

First of all, congratulations on last year’s Shore album. It was on most of the 2020 Best Albums of the Year polls, and many consider it your best work. Would you agree?

Thank you so much! That means a lot. Many music fans (myself included) have deep attachments to songs that served as companions at formative moments in their lives and Shore hasn’t been around long enough yet for that kind of emotional connection to develop… For me personally, it was by far the most fun I’ve had making an album, and the one I’m the most satisfied with as a whole. I remember being so driven as a teenager by how much amazing music Brian made in his early twenties. That he was such a prodigious master of his craft, making Pet Sounds at the astounding age of twenty-three, always pushed me to get as good as I could as a musician, as soon as I could. But at some point I accepted that haste is no substitute for brilliance, there is only one Brian Wilson, and I’d have to be more patient on my own path. So, making Shore at 34 and still being proud of the results feels good.

On Fleet Foxes 2008 debut album, you write about listening to The Beach Boys “Feel Flows” at fourteen on your Walkman in the car with your parents, and then driving yourself at sixteen listening to Brian’s solo version of "Surf’s Up." What is it that first drew you to the Beach Boys and Brian?

My introduction to The Beach Boys was a bit mythological. I didn’t grow up in a religious household, but my parents were musicians, and I remember my dad recounting the history of The Beach Boys in hushed tones, as if it were a lost chapter of the Bible, as if sometime after Adam and Eve a child was born in California who changed music history, someone that everyone including the Beatles agreed was the best to ever live. Without a “Jesus” of my own as it were, the reverence and mythology around Brian quickly filled that role. I grew up a bit introverted, not particularly athletic and insecure about that, but Brian’s presence seemed to say, “we may not make the football team, but who cares about sports when we have this gift of music?” He made all the small indignities those of us who don’t feel “normal” face pale in comparison to the potential benefits. And the music itself - what more can be said? It’s still the best proof we have of the power and potential of pop music, emotionally and compositionally, proof that a pocket symphony is infinitely more inspiring than a real symphony, because it’s more attainable, less bourgeois, to your average aspiring musician or listener. I don’t know. My concept of the world has been so defined by his music that it’s hard to even comment on it, it’s like asking a fish to describe water!

Brian seems to be a perennial favorite of young musicians from generation to generation. Why do you think that is?

He gives perfect voice to so many universal teenage emotional states. I remember listening to “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” on repeat for days as a teenager in the throes of a placeless angst, and finally feeling understood or represented. I still think about the mechanics of that song – it’s as if Tony Asher’s frank, direct lyrics embody what can be plainly stated out loud, while Brian’s prismatic arrangement embodies what is actually felt under the surface. A lyric as straightforward as “Sometimes I feel very sad” becomes a universe when set to music as inventive and emotive as Brian’s. I think a lot of young musicians gravitate to the art form because, for them, music is a better means of communicating emotional realities than language alone can be, closer to the ineffable, unnameable truth of things. And no one has ever gotten closer to that truth than Brian.

Brian’s talked a lot about listening to The Four Freshmen as a teenager, obsessively picking out each voice and teaching himself each of the parts on the piano. This would be the foundation for his future work in creating the Beach Boys’ harmonies. Similarly, Fleet Foxes have such beautiful, distinctive – and complex harmonies. How did you come to be so proficient with harmonies?

By doing the same thing but with The Beach Boys! The box sets and the outtakes, the instrumentals, everything that was being released in the late 90’s and early 2000’s and I was in my formative years, those were my textbooks. My parents bought me a four track for my fifteenth birthday and I would practice stacking harmonies for hours on end. It sounded so bad for many years but eventually I got it sounding smooth, and the OCD part of my brain got a deep satisfaction from getting the parts as exact as possible in terms of pitch and mirrored phrasing. 

Al Jardine is a big fan of you guys. He’s quoted as saying “they’re awesome. They kind of have the Beach Boys vibe too – very beautiful harmonies.” That’s cool coming from one of the Beach Boys themselves. What was your reaction to Al saying that?

So honored! My absolute favorite touring memory is getting to visit Al at his beautiful studio in Big Sur and sit at Brian’s white grand piano.

On Shore, you used Brian’s countdown from his a cappella clip layering his vocals for “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” on your track “Cradling Mother, Cradling Woman.” What inspired you to do this?

That piece of music was so important to me, the demo of him stacking those harmonies that came out with the Pet Sounds box set in 1997. I was so lucky to first become obsessed by that album at a time when the box set was already out; I remember saving up money for weeks to buy it, then poring over every outtake and instrumental for weeks, making mixes of my favorites and listening to them in the car on repeat. For me, that a cappella track was my first “eureka” moment with music, of just how much can be done with just a human voice and a multi-track recorder. It was also a big Rosetta Stone for me in terms of understanding how to stack harmonies, in terms of using contrary motion, chromaticism, oblique motion, and where to place a melody among voices. It also inspired in me a love of bootlegs, or lost tracks, or outtakes. This was also the early days of Napster, where there was a small but healthy community of people stitching together SMiLE bootlegs from various sources, and I was deeply into the archaeology of that fandom. When we were working on “Cradling Mother, Cradling Woman,” I wanted to announce at the beginning of the song that it was polyrhythmic, with one voice counting in three and another voice counting in four, and in thinking about how to do that in an interesting way, I remembered Brian’s iconic count-in to that outtake. Just on a personal level it felt really meaningful, like a full circle journey complete or something, to be counted in by the voice that started it all. I was so honored you allowed us to use the snippet!

Your role in Fleet Foxes is similar to Brian’s with the Beach Boys. You’re the principal songwriter, arranger and producer. Can you relate to Brian in terms of balancing commerce and art? You’ve managed to do that very well – is this something that you think about or does it come naturally?

Thank you - I’d say no one in music history has better balanced art and commerce than Brian. I think when I am most in tune with, and trusting of, my intuition - that’s when things go the smoothest and feel the best, but I can fall in and out of alignment with that based on unknowns or externalities sometimes. We’re all lucky to always have Brian’s arc and career choices to look to as a North Star. He didn’t turn his back on success, but he was always pushing to be better, more creative and more honest.

“Phoenix” is a new song you co-wrote with Aaron Dressner, Justin Vernon and Anaïs Mitchell, with you and Aaron co-producing. It’s a beautiful track and appears on the upcoming Big Red Machine album, due August 27. What was it like stepping out of Fleet Foxes for this project?

I loved working on this song! It’s actually the first time I’ve ever collaborated like this, adding melodies and lyrics to an instrumental someone else made. I loved the chance to find a small spot in someone else’s musical world, to write a verse that would lead smoothly into a chorus sung by others. I’ve been so laser focused on the Fleet Foxes albums over the years that I didn’t make as much time for outside collaborations as I would have liked, and I’m really excited to make a lot more space for that now, it’s a really fun and healing way of working.

So what’s next for Robin Pecknold – a Fleet Foxes tour or new album – or something independent?

We are looking at touring in 2022, hopefully things will be more streamlined by then and this awful pandemic will be further behind us. I’m using the time until then to work on new songs, hopefully for a new Fleet Foxes album, but I’m not sure what shape they are taking yet. I’m also trying to find some exciting new collaborations. We shall see!

Below: Click or tap to play “Sunblind” from Fleet Foxes latest album, Shore.