Shore is the fourth studio album by American folk band Fleet Foxes. It was announced one day in advance of its release, and was intentionally released exactly at the autumnal equinox on September 22, 2020. It is the follow-up to their 2017 album Crack-Up and is the band's first release on Anti- Records. It is the band's second album since regrouping in 2016 after a three-year hiatus. Frontman Robin Pecknold began writing Shore in September 2018 and recorded the album between September 2019 and September 2020, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pecknold produced the album, working alongside recording and mixing engineer Beatriz Artola. It was made by Pecknold without the other members of the band and features a "brighter" sound than their previous work. Shore features a number of collaborators, including other vocalists. Pecknold has called the album a celebration of "life in the face of death". Background A fourth Fleet Foxes album was first mentioned in December 2016 by frontman Robin Pecknold, three months before the announcement of their third studio album Crack-Up (2017). Pecknold claimed that Fleet Foxes was contractually obligated to release another album "within 24 months" of their third album.However, Pecknold clarified that a fourth album had not been written yet and that he was in the process of writing a solo album.Days before the release of Crack-Up, Pecknold teased a fourth album titled Gioia.Crack-Up was released by Nonesuch Records on June 16, 2017. Around the same time, Pecknold stated that he wanted the band's fourth album to have a "joyous"and "ecstatic" sound. He described Crack-Up as beginning in "pure conflicted solitude" and ending in a "bright clearing", and said he wanted their next album to be a "celebration of or elaboration on how Crack-Up ends." Fleet Foxes embarked on an extensive tour in support of Crack-Up, playing upwards of 170 shows.The tour concluded with a performance at the 2018 Bumbershoot festival in Seattle on September 2, 2018. Writing and recording "I wanted the album to exist in a liminal space outside of time, inhabiting both the future and the past, accessing something spiritual or personal that is untouchable by whatever the state of the world may be at a given moment, whatever our season."—Robin Pecknold Pecknold began writing Shore in September 2018, immediately after touring Crack-Up. He wanted to find a "new, brighter way" of writing songs. He created playlists of hundreds of "warm" songs, immersing himself in the music of Arthur Russell, Curtis Mayfield, Nina Simone, Michael Nau, Van Morrison, Sam Cooke, The Roches, João Gilberto, Piero Piccioni, Tim Bernardes, Tim Maia, Jai Paul, and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. Pecknold set out to be productive and avoid another long break between albums, and wrote every day to develop compositions and a musical concept. He wanted to write an album that would celebrate "life in the face of death" and honor musical heroes that have died, explicitly referencing them in the lyrics and "carrying them" in the music. He wanted the album to "exist in a liminal space outside of time" and to provide a sense of relief from some immediate uncertainty. Pecknold wrote consistently for a year, including during a month-long writing trip in rural Portugal. Recording began in September 2019 at Aaron Dessner's Long Pond studio located outside of Hudson, New York. It was Pecknold's first time working with recording and mixing engineer Beatriz Artola. She would go on to record the entirety of the album with Pecknold, being present at every recording session. It was Pecknold's first time working alongside a collaborator for an entire album's recording process. At Long Pond, he also worked with The Westerlies, a horn quartet composed of Andy Clausen, Chloe Rowlands, Riley Mulherkar, and Willem de Koch. They contributed horn arrangements and performances to Pecknold's songs, which were half-formed sketches at the time. Drummer Joshua Jaeger also assisted in arranging rhythms for the songs at the Long Pond session in September 2019. In October 2019, Pecknold and Artola recorded a short session at Studios St Germain in Paris, France.Pecknold enlisted Uwade Akhere, who he discovered after being sent a clip of her singing Fleet Foxes' "Mykonos".Akhere was a Columbia University student studying abroad at Oxford at the time and she traveled by train to Paris to record vocals. Her vocals appear on "Wading in Waist-High Water", "Can I Believe You", and "Shore". Between November 2019 and March 2020, Pecknold and Artola recorded at Woody Jackson's Electro-Vox Studio in Los Angeles California. Pecknold visited Vox years earlier and wanted to record there, and ended up recording most of Shore at Vox. He credits his time at Vox as well as their equipment and instruments for shaping the album's sound. Instruments they were afforded use of at Vox included an extensive collection of various guitar and bass models, Baldwin electric harpsichords, treated congas, a prototype Orchestron, taiko drums, Mahayana temple blocks, and a vibraphone played on The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds, as well as an organ belonging to Fela Kuti and a drum kit belonging to Frank Sinatra. They also spent two weeks at Vox recording with Christopher Bear of Grizzly Bear, who contributes drums and percussion on most of the album. Pecknold had a breakthrough in writing lyrics while traveling back and forth to Upstate New York, including to Lake Minnewaska (pictured). Toward the end of February 2020, Pecknold had the majority of Shore conceptualized and artist contributions recorded, but he failed to write any lyrics he felt comfortable with. He became overwhelmed with worry and anxiety about finishing the album. He would write sets of lyrics only to discard them, struggling to find the perspective he believed would match the music. Many of the songs were musically complete, but others were unfinished or uncertain. Recording at Vox was prematurely cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pecknold flew back to New York City in anticipation of a lockdown, leaving all of his guitars at Vox. He also returned to New York because Artola, who lives in New York, would be unable to travel with him to any studios during a lockdown. For three months, Pecknold quarantined in his Greenwich Village apartment due to Governor Andrew Cuomo's stay-at-home order. He also participated in the George Floyd protests in New York City. In June 2020, he began taking day-long drives in his Toyota 4Runner from his apartment in New York up to Lake Minnewaska and into the Catskill Mountains. It was during these drives that he found himself finally writing lyrics he felt comfortable with, reciting them into his phone and jotting them down in parking lots. He ultimately wrote the lyrics to fifteen songs within three to four weeks. Pecknold credits the COVID-19 pandemic and its surrounding circumstances with causing his anxiety around the album to disappear, allowing him to finish the album and giving him "a different perspective on how important or not this music was in the grand scheme of things." Between July 2020 and August 2020, Pecknold and Artola recorded at The Diamond Mine, a recording studio Long Island City, Queens. It was there that Pecknold met Homer Steinweiss and Paul Spring of the band Holy Hive. Steinweiss contributed drums to four songs on the album and Spring acted as an additional mix engineer. Pecknold and Artola also recorded vocals and overdubs at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village in August 2020. The album was produced entirely by Pecknold and mixed by Artola. Shore was made without the other members of Fleet Foxes: Skyler Skjelset, Casey Wescott, Christian Wargo, and Morgan Henderson. Pecknold expected to record with the band but did not due to the pandemic lockdown as well as his desire to finish the album and quickly release it."Going-to-the-Sun Road" features an outro verse in Portuguese written and sung by Brazilian singer Tim Bernardes of the band O Terno,making it the first original Fleet Foxes song to not be written solely by Pecknold.