Review: The Fresh & Onlys - Secret Walls

Artist: The Fresh & Onlys
Title: Secret Walls
Format: EP
Year: 2011
Label: Sacred Bones
Genre: Psychedelic rock
Rating: 68 / 100

The Fresh & Onlys are a band I discovered about a year ago as being an extremely productive, raw, straight-to-the-point garage rock band. These characteristics of their early music made me being fairly surprised to hear the slower, more psychedelic sound of this new EP, Secret Walls. Now I know their 2009 album Grey Eyed Girls, should have been a warning to what way they were going with their music, but I happened to have missed that one, being only familiar with their more raw garage albums.

Production wise, one could say they have finally moved out of the garage, the overall sound of this EP could be considered as a huge improvement to the somewhat sloppy sound on their earlier works. Musically, they went the same route as they did with their production, songs are far more well-structured, multiple layers of interfering melodies and rhythms is what this EP is all about. As I said in the introduction, this EP is a bit more down-tempo than what they were so used to, making the songs, in my humble opinion, somewhat less "exciting". Now, this is an 18 minute EP, so my attention doesn't have any problems with the minor lack of excitement. On the other hand, I can't guarantee that my attention will be as forgiving if this would be a 40+ minute full-length.

During my first listen, I was amazed by the extremely well-structured songs and even fairly catchy melodies this EP has to offer, still, I really prefer their more raw garage sound on their earliest releases. Objectively, I will still have to call this EP a major musical improvement, just not the kind of improvement I was really waiting for.

Spread the love, even when the sun is temporarily gone,

Selwin.

PS: If you have any recommendations, I would love to hear about them in the comment section.