With a sound reminiscent of 60′s garage rock crossed with hazy summer melodies and girl group vocals, Los Angeles duo Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno, better known as Best Coast, has been causing quite a stir over the past year with a number of well received EPs and singles, including “When I’m With You” and “Sun was High (So was I)”. July 2010 will see the release of their debut LP Crazy for You, available on Mexican Summer. Speaking about the album, Consentino said: “drums are Beatles-esque, guitars are like the Ramones– really punky, messy and sloppy-sounding– and vocals like Phil Spector”. The unmistakable wall-of-sound style is most evident in “I Want You”, with a drum and guitar line which is an obvious homage to The Ronette’s “Be My Baby”.
Thematically, Consentino limits herself to singing about teenage relationships and the praising of lazily wasting away the days on the beach. The lyrics are always straightforward, take the first lines of opener “Boyfriend” (“I wish he was my boyfriend/I’d love him ’till the very end/but instead he’s just a friend/I wish he was my boyfriend”), and you can pretty much deduce what every other song on the album is about. Lyrically it’s such a naive record, that she felt the need to specify they should be taken at face value and that they are not some ironic modern take on 60′s girl groups. However, the fact that the oh-so-popular modern faux low-fi production is present in full force, does take away from Best Coast’s self proclaimed honesty.
If the shallowness of the lyrics might put off some, even worse is the chronic lack of diversity that plagues the record. Best Coast turned heads this past year because in single and EP format, their songs are manageable and pleasant. A full LP of the same 12 songs dealing with teenage love in the context of a sunny summer haze, drenched in fuzzy guitars and wavy vocals does get a bit monotonous, if not even tiring. Perhaps Consentino hasn’t matured enough as a songwriter to manage a full blown album, or perhaps she doesn’t want to, either way, if you’re looking for a fun summer album for 2010, you’d be better off with something like Astro Coast.
