Helplessness Blues

Robin Pecknold wrote “Helplessness Blues” during the long season of doubt after Fleet Foxes’ first record became a surprise phenomenon. The song is his attempt to think out loud about what his twenties were actually supposed to be for — not a conclusion, but a pair of verses spent in thoroughly opposite positions, both sung with equal conviction.

The arrangement pivots at the two-minute mark from a pastoral folk song to a full-band declaration, and then again into a third movement that functions as the resolution. The harmonies are the Fleet Foxes signature, but it’s Pecknold’s phrasing that carries the song — the sound of a young man at a windowsill on a cold morning trying to figure out what he’s actually going to do next.