The Fresh And Onlys - Long Slow Dance
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
Like The Pretty Things and The Blues Magoos (and probably a few others) before them, The Fresh & Onlys have managed to release something with a subtle reference to acid in the title. From the sounds of things though they weren’t taking much whilst making this album as the songs on it are in general rather tamer than those on previous efforts, albeit with no loss of class in the process.
There’s an obvious lushness throughout the work (hinted at right from the off by the sedate cover photo of a loan carnation) that was absent from their previous three albums so it could be said that this is the sound of a band coming of age. Either that or they’ve just been in a more contemplative frame of mind over the course of time it took to write and record the eleven tracks on Long Slow Dance.
Melancholic contemplation is certainly in evidence on ‘Dream Girls’, a mid-album highlight, as the care-free breeze through life enjoyed by such creatures is mournfully recounted with barely more than a guitar and some cunningly deployed xylophone. Mariachi horns bolster the same moody atmosphere a couple of tracks later on ‘Executioner’s Song’ but the pace picks up and the mood lifts on ‘No Regard’, despite its subject matter being one of frustrated love. It reminded me of The Housemartins.
The stops are pulled out further on the far more rocky ‘Euphoria’, which bears most resemblance to anything from either their debut or Grey-Eyed Girls albums. Not then overall a bad piece of work and not one of those worrying changes of directions that bands sometimes undertake when they’ve been around for a bit. Rather more a slow progression in a couple of tentative new directions whilst maintaining that of their original vision so as to gain a grander viewpoint.