Fresh and Onlys interview

Part one of my epic survey of the SF garage rock scene ran yesterday, a piece on the Fresh & Onlys up at Blurt online. (It'll also be in print, though shorter.)

OUTTA THE GARAGE AND INTO THE FIRE Fresh & Onlys
Sep 11, 2012

Or, how the beloved San Fran band evolved and learned how to love the bomb.

BY JENNIFER KELLY

"We never really did identify as a garage band," says Tim Cohen, the singer and main songwriter behind San Francisco's shambolic Fresh & Onlys, a jangly, melody-obsessed outfit whose latest album Long Slow Dance (Mexican Summer) is anything but lo-fi.

The band's fourth full-length was recorded with TransAm's Phil Manley on a mixing board once used for Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London." It is noticeably cleaner sounding than anything the band has done to date. "Part of it is maturing as a band and asking, ‘How are we going to become the band that we want to be?' says Cohen. "We came together to say, let's not put limitations on ourselves. Let's not hide behind layers of reverb and distortion. Let's let the lyrics stand out for once."

"There was really no concerted effort to make a clean sounding record," he adds, "but we did get money to record. We had time to record. We were like, ‘Let's make this sound like an actual record sounds.'"

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