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May 18, 2016 Robin Pecknold By Christopher Roberts

It’s been five long years since the last Fleet Foxes album, 2011’s sophomore effort Helplessness Blues. Pecknold has since been busy getting his undergraduate degree at Columbia University, but has also recently been touring solo, opening for Joanna Newsom. In the comments of a photo Pecknold posted of his Columbia University ID to his Instagram, Pecknold responded to fan questions and revealed that he is working on new Fleet Foxes music for 2017. One fan commented “come back!” to which Pecknold responded “next year!” “My plan is to record and tour and then go back to finish after so not soon,” Pecknold added. “Are you working on solo material or FF? Either way really excited for it,” another fan asked, to which Pecknold responded “FF + etc, thanks man!”

One fan inquired: “Will the same FF members from Helplessness Blues be part of this new record? Is there any changes in the band members?” Pecknold replied: “All the same except Neal Morgan (Joanna Newsom / Bill Callahan) is playing drums.” Obviously Josh Tillman was the band’s last drummer, but he left to focus on his Father John Misty project.

Pecknold also said that the “new material is a different vibe from both [my early work] and 2008-2011 FF please trust my time-fortified discernment as I endeavor to scrub the soundfield of BS and empty sonic reference.”

Pecknold also wrote about the new Radiohead album (he loves “Daydreaming” and “Full Stop”), his Columbia University studies and how he got an F on a final, his favorite books, and expressed his admiration to the Saddle Creek band Big Thief on their song “Masterpiece,” which he calls “so dope.”

Pecknold also got deeper into Radiohead’s new album, A Moon Shaped Pool, and whether the title needs a hyphen between “Moon” and “Shaped”: “My current theory is that there shouldn’t be a hyphen: the title is actually (and sneakily) a complete SVO sentence. Moon is the subject, Shaped the verb, and Pool is the object here. A moon has ‘shaped’ (influenced, formed, guided by its beauty) an individual named Pool (Paul? McCartney). Perhaps Thom and Paul had a nice night drinking wine under a full moon and the experience shaped Paul and Thom wanted to honor the evening with this title. This is all conjecture but that’s where I’m at with it.”

Below is the Instagram post. Also, as a Reddit user points out, Pecknold recently covered Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me” with Neal Morgan for a Sean Pecknold short film, A Study in Time Travel. Watch the film below or fast-forward to the 18:45 mark to hear the cover.

No-Self-y

A photo posted by Robin Pecknold (@robinpecknold) on May 17, 2016 at 7:22pm PDT

A Study In Time Travel from Sean Pecknold on Vimeo.

(Via Pitchfork)