Double LP, Gatefold Jacket, Oversized Two-Sided Poster

Sub Pop's vinyl edition of Helplessness Blues, catalog number SP 888, is a two-record set. The twelve songs run across four sides, three to a side, and the gatefold opens on the album's lyrics, hand-lettered across the inner spread. An oversized two-sided poster carrying the credits is enclosed with the records, which are standard black vinyl. Greg Calbi mastered the album at Sterling Sound, and the Sterling stamp appears in the runout of all four sides.

Helplessness Blues is the second Fleet Foxes album, released by Sub Pop on May 3, 2011, with Bella Union issuing it in Europe. Sub Pop's own notes place the recording across a year and four studios: Reciprocal Recording and Avast Recording in Seattle, Dreamland Studios in West Hurley, New York, and Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville, Washington. The liner notes add a fifth location, the water cistern at Fort Worden in Port Townsend, where the record's loud noises were captured. Phil Ek engineered and mixed, and co-produced with the band. Robin Pecknold wrote all twelve songs and the band arranged them.

It is the first Fleet Foxes album to feature bassist Christian Wargo and multi-instrumentalist Morgan Henderson, and the only one with drummer Josh Tillman, who left in 2012 and records now as Father John Misty. The liner notes account for the widened palette: Casey Wescott plays pump organ, Marxophone, music box, Tremoloa, harpsichord, Mellotron and Tibetan singing bowls alongside piano, Pecknold adds fiddle, mandolin, hammer dulcimer and lever harp, Skyler Skjelset plays water harp, and Henderson brings upright bass and woodwinds. Alina To plays violin on "Bedouin Dress" and "The Shrine / An Argument," and Bill Patton pedal and lap steel on "Grown Ocean."

Pecknold told The Guardian in 2009 that he was working toward the feeling of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, an album that sounds to him as though "there were only six hours in the universe for that album to be recorded in," and named the twelve-string guitar of Roy Harper's Stormcock as the record's primary departure from the debut. Helplessness Blues peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, the band's highest placing on that chart, reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 1 in Norway, and was nominated for Best Folk Album at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards. Metacritic's average across 42 reviews is 85 out of 100. The RIAA certified the album Gold in 2023.

The cover is a mind-map illustration by Seattle artist Toby Liebowitz, colored by Chris Alderson, with photography, collage and design by Sean Pecknold. The album is dedicated to Andy Kotowicz.

Tracklist

LP 1 — Side A

1. Montezuma
2. Bedouin Dress
3. Sim Sala Bim

LP 1 — Side B

4. Battery Kinzie
5. The Plains / Bitter Dancer
6. Helplessness Blues

LP 2 — Side C

7. The Cascades
8. Lorelai
9. Someone You'd Admire

LP 2 — Side D

10. The Shrine / An Argument
11. Blue Spotted Tail
12. Grown Ocean

Complete the Collection (4)

• A Very Lonely Solstice
• Fleet Foxes
• Shore
• Helplessness Blues (this release)

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Last updated: 2/6/26

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Last updated: 2/6/26