See Fleet Foxes Perform Reverent ‘Fool’s Errand’ on ‘Colbert’

Fleet Foxes brought multi-part harmonies and shambling folk-rock to The Late Show on Thursday, performing “Fool’s Errand” from their Crack-Up LP.

“Fool’s Errand” mixes dogged, earnest strumming and ornate singing arrangements. The performance opened up around the one minute mark when Fleet Foxes started to demonstrate their vocal firepower. “I knew it was a fool’s errand,” Robin Pecknold sang, stretching the words “knew” and “errand” over multiple beats. After he brought “errand” to a close, the band joined him for pretty harmony that reached back to the handsome patterns of Sixties folkies like Simon and Garfunkel or Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Fleet Foxes released Crack-Up, their first LP since 2011, in June. The album debuted at Number Nine on the Billboard albums chart. 

Pecknold pushed himself to write and produce differently on the record, often by inserting sudden, jarring shifts into the LP’s songs. “Having done this for a long time, we’re trying to find new ways to keep it interesting,” he told Rolling Stone. “All good songwriting is about contrast – setting up an expectation and subverting it.”