No doubt about it, Freelove Fenner is one clean-cut combo, plain and simple-like, and I’m not just talking about their hair or classy button-down shirts. But even with the snare dry as a bone like it is, and the crystalline clean guitar; none of it exactly sparkles. No, the tone of this Montreál trio is forever-sepia, feels as antique as the antiquity of pop itself, but — if I may — a distinction and maybe the grainy, JLK-starring clip for “All Things Break Through” below can help explain a little: There’s no looking back here, no worshipping of lost idols or summoning of ‘forgotten’ ghosts. It’s not old, nor is it a copy of something that is - Freelove Fenner simply exists there, and wherever “there” is isn’t so much a debatable time period as it is a lazily unanswered question, the kind you might happen upon in a daydream. Kasowicz seems lost without consequence in the video, chancing her path by the roll of a die, and when she does find something — a relic of a specific time — she’s quick to bury it, light another cigarette, and move on. And in its stumbling through the ages, Freelove Fenner is also somewhat ageless; polished and poised, pop music that is exquisitely, is naturally all its own.
“All Things Break Through” and other charmers can be found on the band’s first full-length album Do Not Affect a Breezy Manner, which follows last year’s wonderful Pineapple Hair EP, all of it courtesy of the fine folks at Fixture Records.
• Freelove Fenner: http://www.freelovefenner.com
• Fixture Records: http://www.fixture-records.com