Helplessness Blues Bella Union ****

“So now I am older” are the first words you hear on the follow-up to Fleet Foxes’ much-heralded debut. The song itself,

Montezuma

, is an elegiac affair that sets out the lyrical stall early on – Helplessness Blues is riddled with doubt, insecurity and a bespoke organic, neo-hippy angst.

Clearly, this is a band uncomfortable with the big, bad music industry, but you can forgive them the indulgence when the music behind the words is replete with such intricate, gossamer beauty that at times you just want to shout “Hallelujah” at the folky delicacies being offered up.

It’s curious how much this album shares thematically with Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs. Just as Win Butler shook his indie locks at the “businessmen who want to drink my blood”, so Robin Pecknold gets his head wrecked by The Man here on the titular track when he rails against “the men who move only in dimly lit halls and determine my future for me”.

On the same track he finds himself being “a functioning cog in some great machinery” and generally wallows in a bit of light self-loathing about the predicament he’s got himself into (success, fame, wealth) before expressing a longing to go off and work in an orchard. But we know we’re not in AC/DC territory with Fleet Foxes, and what clinches it here for them – despite the cloying vegetarian cafe feel, sometimes – is the way they’re so artfully capable of melding that early Laurel Canyon sound with Smile-era Beach Boys to produce such truly remarkable music.

There's an almost old-time religious feel to tracks such as The Shrine/An Argument, and there's newer psychedelic-folk cadences thrown in to leaven the sound, but when they really hit it here they remind you of no one more than prime-time Paul Simon. The closer, Grown Ocean, shows a looser, less self-conscious side that benefits from the lack of introspection. As winsomely wistful as they come. See fleetfoxes.com

Download tracks: Helplessness Blues, Montezuma, The Shrine/An Argument