The Fresh & Onlys

The Fresh & Onlys shambles barefoot through Summer of Love-style guitar and tambourine jams, strewing lyrical oddities and flower garlands along the path that leads, if not to where Syd Barrett lives, at least to Dan Treacy’s neighborhood (Dusted Review) The Fresh & Onlys formed just last year in San Francisco, but they already boast more music to their name than most bands manage in twice that time. Over the course of a flurry of 7"s, a limited-edition cassette, and two full-length albums-- last spring's self-titled and now Grey-Eyed Girls-- you can hear the sound of a young band busily honing in on what they're good at. In case you weren't tipped off by their almost distractingly evocative band name (should we be thinking of the Only Ones, or the Young Fresh Fellows?), the Fresh & Onlys traffic in jangly garage-pop, balancing psych-rock swagger with generous dollops of sweetly cockeyed melody. Their recordings are lovingly caked with crud, and their jams sometimes veer perilously close to derailing completely, which might seem to lump them in with other San Francisco psych revivalists like Thee Oh Sees and Sic Alps. But the Fresh & Onlys are set apart by an endearingly fussy devotion to songcraft and an understated and unfakeable weirdness. Their self-titled record was fairly straightforward but satisfying garage rock; Grey-Eyed Girls is stranger and more interesting, toning down the swagger and finding a sweet spot somewhere in between uptempo brashness and the quirky vulnerability of Beat Happening. (Pitchfork)