BIG FRESH/Yes, Nice, Please, Thanks/
Aquapop Records


Big Fresh's latest release, Yes, Nice, Please, Thanks,
is a relentlessly melodic record filled with eclectic instrumental touches and hopelessly clever songwriting. In a woozy dreamscape of plush, moody compositions, Big Fresh emerge as proud purveyors of exotically down-home art pop. A band more interested in textures than traditional settings, they perform crisp, cerebral pop that explodes with energy and ideas.

Elliptical, often tongue-in-cheek lyrics and soaring vocals indicate strong influences by bands ranging from 10cc to XTC and NRBQ. Paying great attention to sonic detail, Big Fresh create dizzying, dreamy melodies with a stampeding legion of guitars, keyboards, horns, and programmed sounds.

"Don't Call It a Comebacharach" is a Beulah-ish horn-driven pop song with an interesting rap interlude while "2199" hits like an aural zeitgeist, complete with digital sounds, vocoder effects, and handclaps. There are beautiful swells and lush arrangements everywhere, especially in songs like "I Know You're There, "Lost and Found," and Sleep." "No Guarantees" and "Introduce Ourselves" find the band drifting into dreamy Air-style electro-psychedelia with liquid instrumentation and a hypnotic quietude. "Sexual, Kentucky" sounds like twisted theme show music while "Jesus Christ" plays like some sort of merry mysticism on top of sporadic country and western beats.

With a shameless commitment to pop, these starry-eyed sketches of strolling melodics and sunny voices create a sonically pungent synthesis of the belligerently overactive and the intensely tuneful on this oddly and perversely satisfying record.

--Chris Webb The Big Takeover
Issue #48 May 2001
yes, nice, please, thanks
(Aquapop)

Did you hear the one about the alien graduate students? Their thesis project involved abducting earth�s pop music luminaries, assimilating their knowledge, and creating a super-album with which to infiltrate radio playlists and take over the world. The aliens are 30 years behind the times, but no matter; Big Fresh�s Yes, Nice, Please, Thanks is the resulting album, recorded with studious obsession on an alien grad student budget. "Introduce Ourselves" and "Strike Up the Band" blend Beach Boys harmonies with jaunty "Penny Lane" pianos. "Plastic" bounces along like Blur�s "Coffee and TV," adding a breezy marimba. "Don�t Call it a Comebacharach" features horn arrangements drawn shamelessly from Burt Bacharach�s "Say a Little Prayer." The proud oddball of this bunch is "I Know You�re There," which illustrates what might have happened if Game Theory and They Might Be Giants had collaborated on songs for Gilbert & Sullivan�s Pirates of Penzance.
(www.aquapop.com) � BUCKETFULL OF BRAINS (UK)
May 2000
by Robin

� Big Fresh "Who Are The Believers" (Aquapop)
Big Fresh are 4 talented songwriters from Kentucky who have created an imaginative album full of pleasant surprises. It has a nice light and breezy feel; no bombast is needed, and it's delicate without ever being wimpy. They even use the odd Jazz time signature here and there; the results are naturally clever, but never pompous. The secret of the album's success is maybe down to the way they've gathered several disparate ideas and sometimes divergent influences and assimilated them into a cohesive whole. For instance, the prominent use of keyboards at times recalls The Zombies, The Beach Boys come to mind on a song like "Danny's Peak" as it has a pleasing Smile era feel. You could even say that " Ein Heisser Tip Fur Girls And Boys" could have been formulated in the twisted mind of Joe Meek! But when you hear a song that is as delightful as "Leap Into The Sky", you realise that it's plain stupidity to try and analyse it, so just sit back and float away, you may never want to return.

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