I was born in 1970. While I do remember some flashes of my first five years in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn -- the general layout of my family's apartment, helping my father pick out his 1969 Dodge Dart, my parents bringing my new brother home from the hospital -- I don't remember much before about 1975, the year we moved to New Jersey. As much as I'd like to say that I was right there for the birth of New Wave in the mid 70s, I think I was a bit more concerned with learning to ride a bike and with somehow turning myself into a Yankee fan as some sort of pre-teen rebellion against my familiy's National League bias. As the mid 70s turned into the late 70s and early 80s, I probably started thinking about girls.
Terms like "new wave," "post punk," even "punk" probably have their own specific meanings in an academic, musical criticism sense. To me, like "psychedelic," they only have meaning in terms of the sounds they call up in my head. "New wave" is mid 70s / early 80s Cars, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, The Knack, etc. PunkISH, I guess. But also much more concerned with musicality and poppiness. That's what I kept thinking about as I (finally) ran through the neighborhood yesterday listening to Long Slow Dance, the latest from San Francisco's The Fresh & Onlys.
Long Slow Dance is the band's fourth LP, and it's my first encounter with them. There's an unmistakable "new-waviness" to the entire album. "Fire Alarm" and "Euphoria" are the straight-ahead, early MTV, new wave tracks. New wave combines, though, with a western or country sound on several songs. On songs like opener "20 Days and 20 Nights," the title track, "Presence of Mind," and "Dream Girls," the Ennio Morricone-sounding guitar leads combine with the rhythm to provide an expansiveness that works really nicely with the romantic, lovelorn lyrics. Tim Cohen sings with a sense of pleading and desperation as he warns us all about the dangers of love.
The vinyl version of Long Slow Dance is available as a limited-edition, clear LP (Mexican Summer). That's the version I have. It's appropriate as there's a "glassiness" to the album's production, as if it were all recorded inside a giant snow globe with the sounds bouncing and echoing everywhere.
I worry sometimes that so much of mindie, and pop in general, derives its sound from an earlier time. It's hard to fault a band like The Fresh & Onlys, though, when they produce an album like Long Slow Dance. Sure, there are definite retro aspects to the sounds and themes. But part of what makes popular music popular is that it's able to grab something inside of you and take you someplace. It's really effective if it can do that without being corny or clichéd. As I plodded along past my old grade school yesterday, I couldn't help thinking about sitting in the backseat of one of my parents' Darts (we had a Swinger, too), wondering why some girl in my fourth-grade class never looked at me.
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