Best Coast is a California surf-rock band consisting of Bethany Cosentino on lead guitar and vocals, and Bobb Bruno on varying instruments. Best Coast released their debut album Crazy for You in 2010 and I learned of them just last summer. Crazy for You and Best Coast's sound in general is a very simplistic distortion heavy, surf rock sound with the typical girl-band lyrics, which is certainly not a bad thing. The charm of Best Coast's sound is Bethany's lackadaisical vocals and the very lighthearted subjects of boys, laziness, and loving home highlighted in their single When I'm With You. If you're someone who only prefers the most complex of instrumentation and lyrical art you will not enjoy this, the reason people love the band is the simplicity and the catchy sound. With that background I move onto their latest release, The Only Place.
The past few months I've really been into Best Coast, seeing at Urban Outfitters during SxSW, needless to say I was very excited to hear their latest work. I stayed away from song leaks to avoid any anticipation or dread that might've come along with it.
In order to give this album a fair listen without interruption, I figured I would have to find a place where nothing would draw my attention away from the music. Of course! The car would be the perfect place, driving around blaring it to get the full dosage, there's nothing else to pay attention to when driving right?
I gave the album two good listens and then skimmed a third time to make sure I had my opinions right, it's not a very long album so it wasn't very difficult or very time consuming.
The Verdict
The Only Place is unfortunately not the same sound that I fell in love with when I first listened to Best Coast. It's a much more clean sounding project and it seems that the band traded in their distortion and monotonic sound for a much more perky vocal expression and folky, at times almost country rock groove.
The opening track and first single is the title track for the album and lyrically it's vintage Best Coast with Bethany singing about the perks of California and I was very into the track despite the cleanliness of the production. After that the album takes a very country driven route, as I stated earlier the production is very...pretty and that takes part of the enjoyment out for me because the edginess and garage sound of their past releases are what I love.
Don't get me wrong, Bethany is expanding her vocal range and variations on this album as she should be, she has a very lovely sound to her. I know it may seem that I'm harping on the production but that's because the neatness of the sound is where the majority of the country and folk sound comes from, there's no droning shoe-gaze influence anymore and it almost sounds, typical. The catchy tunes are still there, but like I said the sound just isn't there for me.
By no means am I saying that this is a bad album, just not my cup of tea. The lyrics are still very innocent and charmingly simplistic but the sound that echos is just overproduced, I found maybe three songs that I felt a desire to play over. If you're a fan of today's country scene, or just female vocalists in general you may like this album. If you're a Best Coast fan, then it's a tossup you may like it, you may not. Me personally? Not feeling it, I'm gonna look back on it at varying times throughout the year and see if my opinions change at all, and will write a followup to this at a later date.
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