The Fresh & Onlys

1. When I see “fresh” and “o”, I just think of “fresh onions”, so for a while, I had mental images of onions when I think of The Fresh & Onlys, a band out of my home state of California. Legend has it that the band was formed because singer/songwriter Tim Cohen wanted to write a song called “Be My Hooker”.

2. The band have just announced their 2010 Spring tour dates. This should be fun for all, as listening to their self-titled debut album on Castle Face Records, they sound so raw and garagey that sometime I think they don’t care if their guitars are out of tune.

I’m not going to lie, but their self-titled album isn’t going to win any awards for production, the bass sounds trembling loud and vocals sounds like it’s coming from a damp, hollow basement. I suppose that’s the kind of DIY production that fans will find attractive, but listening to it on monitor headphones can be unbearable.

Among the things I found that I liked are whenever I hear the non-traditional rock & roll instruments, like perhaps a tambourine (“Shattered Moon”) or harmonica (“Nuclear Disaster”). My easily favorite song is “Peacock And Wing”, simply because there’s a great melody and a faint duet with (I think) Heidi Alexander. Also, I believe this is the song that the band name comes from:

You should really be my fresh and only.
You’d have a smile on your face that I can always see only.
Lay with me on my bed and roses.
You’d have a smile on your face that I can only see only.

The album was released last July, and with a blink of an eye, and two months later, their second album, Grey-Eyed Girls was released on Woodsist Records. That’s incredibly fast, they’re no Elastica or Stone Roses, for sure. I don’t have their second album for comparison, but I suspect, it’s more or less garage rock… especially if the recordings were done in a span of a few months.