You could tell just how different a Fleet Foxes concert is from other rock shows simply by paying a little attention to the audience.
Some fans at Sunday's second of two sold-out, worshipful Palace Theatre shows shushed other fans for talking. The few rebels in the crowd who dared to break out their phones and shoot a little video — against the band's stated wishes — were met with stares as icy as the glaciered mountaintops shown on the video backdrop during "White Winter Hymnal." And then there were the kooky things a few of them yelled out between songs.
"You should write a musical!" one fan gushed to lead Fleet Fox Robin Pecknold.
"What kind of tea are you drinking?" another asked.
OK, so this wasn't a Motörhead gig. Even the last band to pack the Palace for a two-nighter, the slackerishly poppy Spoon, seemed fierce and fiery by comparison.
Probably the most high-adrenaline stunt Fleet Foxes pulled off on Night 2 was playing the flute-heavy song "Mearcstapa" straight into the piano-laden "On Another Ocean (January / June)" without stopping. Yeah, whoa.
In their own peculiar, ultra-harmonious way, though, Fleet Foxes did cast a magic spell over the Palace. The five-man Seattle area band built up a lot of anticipation for the show simply by going a half-decade between albums and tours. In that time, Pecknold enrolled at Columbia University with a humanities major while his former drummer, Josh Tillman, became something of a major rock star known as Father John Misty.
This weekend's two-hour concerts proverbially picked up where the band left off, sans Tillman. As on their new album, "Crack-Up," Pecknold & Co. continue to expand their sound beyond the harmonious acoustic folk mold that has earned them ample Crosby, Stills & Nash comparisons.
