Indie folk rockers Fleet Foxes have opened up about the inspiration behind their latest album Shore, which they said was born out of the “horrible circumstances” of the dumpster fire of a year that is 2020.
Speaking of their follow up to Fleet Foxes’ 2017 album Crack Up, frontman Robin Pecknold discussed the creation of the band’s latest studio effort in a new interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music.
“All the lyrics came out of reflections around what’s going on right now and tying that into personal things,” Pecknold said, adding that he “ended up just driving around in self-quarantine, writing lyrics and singing” throughout June.
“It’s a time of obviously incredible hardship, but hopefully there’s a lot of new perspective that’s being felt and new ways of doing things that will develop and new ways of making art and transmitting performances. We have to stay optimistic about that aspect while this is going on.”
Pecknold added that the “horrible circumstances” of 2020 had influenced the creation and content of Shore, adding that he’d been struggling to find “any kind of lyrical perspective” before the world was forced into lockdown.
“I ended up having three months to just reflect and notice the world changing and be horrified and then encouraged by so much social awareness and class consciousness and all of this stuff that was kind of all of these,” he said.
“I think all of that stuff made its way into the lyrics and gave me stuff to write about, or think about that when before it was just, ‘I just got to get this thing out there regardless of what the ideas are’.”
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Shore was released on Tuesday, September 22nd, to coincide with Autumnal Equinox.
Check out ‘Shore’ by Fleet Foxes:
