Fleet Foxes share new song ‘A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen’
It’s only been two years since Fleet Foxes dropped their most recent studio album, Shore, but fans are still clamouring for new material. Chalk it up to the pandemic, I guess, but Robin Pecknold’s gentle acoustic folk felt like such a warm hug in a dark time that it only makes sense for people to want more of it. A 2021 live album, A Very Lonely Solstice, was a welcome addition, but where is all the new material?
One place it’s showing up is in the new Amazon Prime movie Wildcat. The film follows a veteran who travels down the Amazon river and eventually becomes entrusted with an orphaned ocelot. It’s almost the perfect setting for a Fleet Foxes song (all that’s missing is replacing the Amazon River with a wintery cottage), and Pecknold has contributed the new song ‘A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen’ to the soundtrack.
Featuring Brazilian musician Tim Bernardes, ‘A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen’ opens up with the most relaxing soundscape I’ve heard in a long time. Gentle water movements compliment Pecknold’s signature acoustic guitar and vocal interplay. I’m not fully certain what Bernardes contributed (probably the stately keyboard lines, maybe some additional guitar, and certainly some vocals), but it all blends perfectly into Pecknold’s unmistakable sound.
“I was inspired by how the film employed unconventional means to arrive at something universally moving and was struck by all the collisions inherent in the film’s conceit — between species, between hemispheres, between individuals, between the psychological and the natural,” Robin Pecknold said in a statement. “In hotel rooms and in borrowed studios, on time stolen from a world tour, I put this song together. It was an honour to be asked to make a song that could serve as an end-cap to this unique and affecting story and to collaborate with Tim again.”
It’s a big moment for musicians lending their talents to new movies. Obviously, the biggest one this week was the return of Rihanna and her new addition to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack, ‘Lift Me Up’. But we also got the news that psychedelic weirdos Animal Collective will provide the music for what looks like a relatively straightforward bit of Oscar bait, The Inspection. Now seems as good a time as any for Fleet Foxes to jump on the bandwagon.
Check out ‘A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen Before’ down below.
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