Fergus and Geronimo - Unlearn (new indie pop on Hardly Art)

have loved fergus and geronimo's singles for a year or so, three of them so far that i know of, and now they've just got a long-playing record out on sub-pop's kid brother imprint. i don't know that they're "significant" enough to deserve a dedicated thread (or sufficiently well-suited to ILM's tastes), but i'm on board, and that's enough for me. still, fair warning: i'd be surprised if this appealed to many without an established fondness for retro-styled indie garage.

i guess you could lazily compare unlearn to smith westerns' recent sophomore LP, in that it's arguably more an act of fond pastiche than of wholly organic creation. it's rawer than than that record and casts a considerably wider net, touching on a sometimes bewildering variety of vintage 60s sounds where SW generally stick to smoothed-out FM jams in a mott/oasis vein, but both bands share a similar reverence for well-trodden stretches of pop precedent, indie and otherwise. if that sounds like damnation with faint damn, i'd say that F&G's imagination and songwriting chops easily transcend the often familiar trappings. good songs = good songs.

new album:
http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/fandgdebutalbumcoverart452.jpg

"powerful lovin" (single version from early/mid 2010, playing up the retro soul angles):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHCx0zciZrE

okay, so i'll keep plugging away at this. official-type video for "where the walls are made of grass":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSNMK7muuE

probably a better intro than the clip i linked above. "where the walls" more clearly displays their snarky/cynical lyrics and (not entirely) retro psych popstyle. occurs to me now, at this late data, that the fresh & onlys are their most obvious contemporary brethren, sonically speaking: disarmingly simple tunes, ramshackle production, folk touches that don't prevent them from kicking at the stalls when necessary.