Good art often comments on the times. Fleet Fox’s newest album, Crack- Up, proves that some people still make music that is not just about club anthems and shaking off your problems. Taylor Swift insults aside, Crack– Up is rife with poetry that is insightful and telling. While most articles on this album have focused on the musicality, less attention has been given to the lyrical subject matter inspired by our current political state. As someone quite surly towards in the Trump Administration’s latest atrocities, (i.e. taking the Grizzly Bear in Yellowstone off the endangered species list), I naturally drew connections the first time I listened to “If You Need To, Keep Time on Me”. The following discussion is based on the official lyrics from the vinyl LP that included parenthetical notes before and throughout the songs. In this manner, we are left clues to pursue the deeper unsung meanings.

Fleet Foxes, headed by songwriter and lead singer Robin Pecknold, transforms the dreadful, empty feeling a lot of us felt on January 20, 2017 and actually makes it sound hopeful (the date is featured above the lyrics of “If You Need To, Keep Time on Me”). Rather than comment on the actual events of the day, he brings music and words to the internal dialogue some of us were having: “How could it all fall in one day? / Were we too sure of the sun?” How could something so inconceivable have happened? Pecknold compares the confidence many people felt toward Hillary’s victory with the steadfast rising of the sun. However, not all of us were that confident.

During election night, I was on Facebook scrolling through my feed when I came across a post from a student I knew from high school. The returns from the Midwest were coming in and Trump was leading. Even though it was around 8pm Pacific Time, this person was angry — not over Trump’s lead — but towards people in California who voted for Hillary or, as they called her, “Killary”. They ranted about how Jill Stein was the better candidate and that a vote for Stein would be purist spite against the eventual Clinton C.A. victory. I almost responded, “Are you not watching the news?” Though most of the comments were echoing the post’s sentiment, in a way, these people also had too much faith in the sun, and thus became privileged enough to disparage their only hope.

“Who knows what State is in store?” / If they all turn will you run?” Pecknold continues his searching, projecting his uncertainty. The State is not only our government but also the state of our politics and country. The following line meditates on how others in politics will respond to the changing tide: will they fall into line, or run against the grain?

Midway through the song, the chords modulate to major, almost lifting you out of the dismal scene painted before. “Wide / white oceans roar, A frightened fool stokes heedless / heatless fire.” Now these are when official lyrics become helpful. I think we all know who the frightened fool is and the white ocean of the “silent majority”. Their fury, as Pecknold sees it, is heedless, disconnected from any principle or veracity. Yet through this, the singer offers any gloomy listener a rod to lean on and a steady guitar strum to symbolize these times will eventually pass.

Throughout the album, the ocean and water become recurring metaphors lyrically and musically. Loops of rhythmic water lapping on the shore decorate the beginning of “Cassius”. Imagine you are looking at a still ocean. Its plane represents the barrier between a life dulled and drowned in the conflicts of our time (under the water), and the perceptive dreamers who are worried by those “unaffected amid the violence”. The entire song continually shifts between these two frames of mind, like a ship rocking on a vicious sea. The narrator who is above the surface and evidently “woke” is left asking, “are we also tame?”

Each song deserves it’s own analysis, but I haven’t the reserves to do them justice. However, if you’re looking for words and music to express your frustration amid despondence, look no further than the middle section of the last song of the album. “Crack- Up” begins like a boat on a flat, foggy sea, lurching forward listlessly. That is, until high-pitched bells announce an impending (iceberg), transitioning to “When the world insists / That the false is so / With a philippic, as Cicero / ‘The tighter the fist, / the looser the sand’.” A philippic is a harsh verbal attack, made famous in Ancient Rome by Cicero, who wrote denunciations against Marc Antony, for which he was ultimately executed. For words like fists are not always the most effective; to better hold sand, your grip must be loose. If only the leader in the White House could adopt that view towards the world.

Crack-Up in itself feels like a roadmap to anyone trying to connect to their bedrock: of people who have lost their way, but realize now that they are all that they need. They just have to read the lyrics.