The Fresh & Onlys

The Fresh & Onlys started out as a collaboration between frontman Tim Cohen (Black Fiction) and bassist Shayde Sartin, who started putting songs together in 2004. The Fresh & Onlys' lineup eventually expanded to include Kyle Gibson, Wymond Miles, and Heidi Alexander (who soon left the band); drawing from a hodge-podge of influences (among them Buzzcocks, the Mekons, and Country Joe MacDonald), the new lineup arrived at a grimy-yet-sunny pop sound along the lines of Saturday Looks Good to Me and Welcome. Over the next four years, the Fresh & Onlys self-released a couple of recordings (Medicine Island, Imaginary Friends), put out a self-titled full-length album on John Dwyer's Castle Face label in 2009, and released a 7" single, "I'll Tell You Everything," on Dirty Knobby Industries. The band's second full-length album, Grey-Eyed Girls, was released on Woodsist in the fall of 2009. It was followed by a flood of recordings in 2010. An EP for Captured Tracks (August on My Mind), a handful of singles for various labels, and finally their third album, Play It Strange, which was released in October by In the Red. The group began 2011's output with an EP in April called Secret Walls, released on the Sacred Bones label. Also that year, Cohen released an album (Ruler of the Night) on Hardly Art with his other band Magic Trick, and Miles released a solo album (Under the Pale Moon) for Sacred Bones. The group came back in August of 2012 with their fourth album, and first for Mexican Summer, Long Slow Dance. ~ Margaret Reges, Rovi