I’ve had a couple of new items up at Blurt lately.
My favorite new band for 2009, the Fresh & Onlys, is doing that thing where they flood the market and confuse everybody…Grey-Eyed Girls is their second album in six months, but who’s counting when it’s this much fun?
Fresh & Onlys Grey-Eyed Girls
The Fresh & Onlys' self-titled debut earlier this year established the SF garage psych outfit as one of the best new bands of 2009. This second full-length, just a couple of months later, intensifies the sound, pushes it into slightly darker, more echoey corners, and, overall, strengthens the case. The songwriting has gotten stronger, spookier, funnier (the album's first line observes, "You don't have to pray/for beautiful skin/when you live/in a black coffin") and the band has improved noticeably with practice. There's nothing radically different about Grey-Eyed Girls, as compared to the first record, just a sense that everything has been nailed down a little harder.
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“Invisible Forces”
And then there’s Panther, which used to be a one-man, boom box aided, kind performance art, but now is sort of a band (a duo with live drums and multiple instruments). This was Blurt’s “Band of the Week” last week.
Panther Entropy
In physics Entropy measures disintegration and disorder, the continual process of things falling apart. That's a fitting name for Panther's latest work, where pop forms are unceasingly put together, pulled apart and reassembled. Here rhythms, melodies and harmonies rub together in a humming friction of point, counterpoint and chaos.
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“Love Is Sold”
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nice review of the fresh & onlys. i agree with the s/t record being all over the map and not necissarily a record that needs or even wants to be played through start to finish. i've come round to it though over the months as being a unified effort by gaining a greater appreciation for songs like arms advice, lets hang, and feelings in my heart, which I didn't graviate towards initially due to endless repeated plays of peacock & wing, endless love, and love and kindness.
grey eyed girls definately appears more unified, every song presenting itself as the 'hit' of the record, and maybe, over time, grey-eyed girls might suffer because of this apparent fact, but i doubt thats really even possible considering the high caliber of songwriting going on. i've said this probably a thousand times in the last week alone, but i can't resist saying it again, bomb wombs remains, in my mind, phenominal and the most infectious release of the year from not only the fresh & onlys, but any band.
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