Album Review: foxtails – fawn (Art Punk/Screamo)

Written by Barlovv

“Is this what it’s like to grow up?
To realize everything’s fucked up?
To realize dreams are delusions of youth?”

I have to wonder how many screamo bands from my youth could boast a violin player that never once feels like a gimmick, but a completely organic piece of the puzzle that makes up their music.

Enter foxtails, a band that I only heard for the first time with the release of their album fawn, and a band that I will hold up as one of my all time favourites. fawn is a shot in the arm, and one that raises the bar of what we should expect in terms of effort and honesty in the genre. If you’re not at their level, what are you doing?

There is a mix of anger and anguish that comes through so sincerely and powerfully that it’s hard not to look at other acts that share a genre with foxtails as being wholly insincere. Blue Luno Solaz is an extraordinary vocalist and brings so much raw feeling to each song, be their words screamed, sung, or spoken. The arrangements are chaotic and disjointed but absolutely make sense, and foxtails feels like a group that should be made up of seven people rather than just the four of them. Right from “ego death”, fawn grips and refuses to let go, not that you’d be able to walk away if it did. There is a despair in Blue’s vocal performance that really got its hooks in me in ways that I wasn’t prepared for, everything they say coming from a wound that just won’t close.

“I’ve been matched with a face I can’t see”

foxtails hold absolutely nothing back in the 43 minutes you are privileged to spend with fawn; you are on this train and it has no interest in making the trip easy, you will share space with the vulnerability and anger here, and that’s just how it is going to be. I’m genuinely green with envy at the young people growing up with bands like foxtails. Having a screamo band with a diverse representation of identities and cultural backgrounds makes for crucial perspectives and themes in what can be a homogenous genre of angsty white boys. fawn tackles issues of identity, relationships, violence, and other pieces that makes this album feel like an exemplary piece of art for the times we live in, and the times we have coming.

It’s hard to overstate how good this album is. It is a refreshing work in a genre that was even a bit homogenous when I was a teenager. It will not come as a surprise to anyone when this turns up on my best of the year list.

The Bottom Line

Look, listen, the album came out in January. It’s now almost June. If you’ve not heard this album yet, you’ve wasted half of your year. Put it in your ears. Also go buy the vinyl, it’s absolutely beautiful.