Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold: “I was trying to become a different person making Crack-Up”

Fleet Foxes let Uncut gatecrash their first rehearsal in five years in the new issue, as they reveal the truth about the making of their comeback album, Crack-Up.

Telling a tale of university, F Scott Fitzgerald, surfing, zen retreats and “mental nightmares” in the studio, Robin Pecknold and his bandmates explain how they created their long-awaited third album.

“In some ways I was trying to become a different age or a different person making this record, like I was trying to be the person I always wanted to be,” says Pecknold. “There are certain things I don’t feel like I nailed on those old albums, so I wanted to make sure I could try those things, whether it’s a multi-part song or a certain kind of fingerpicking.”

“There are times on the record when you can hear [Pecknold] losing it,” says Skyler Skjelset. “He started pounding [the marimba] with mallets and yelling into the mic. I was watching him lose his shit, crying with laughter in the control room.”

The new Uncut, dated June 2017, is out now in shops and available to buy online.

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section