[rating=5.00]
Best Coast is so SoCal it’s impossible not to listen to them and envision palm trees, white sand and sun-drenched neon. Bethany Cosentino is undoubtedly talented. Her voice is strong and emotional, and she has that mastered combination of laissez faire melancholy and swooning romance. As a band, she and her band mate Bobb Bruno have consistently created what can only be called stoner pop. Their songs are faded and washed out, but they’re lush and catchy the way a great pop song should be.
Their 2010 debut Crazy for You was a stellar series of throwback garage rock songs about immaturity, unmet expectations and hormonal pining. The fuzzed out guitars and droning harmonies were a definitive introduction to what Best Coast is all about, and every song felt like a standout.
By 2012’s The Only Place, they had cleaned up their sound a bit and delved a little deeper and darker. Those failed relationships were still captured beautifully, but there were a handful of a filler songs that just didn’t feel good enough to exist alongside the really great ones.
And on their latest full-length release California Nights, there seems to be even less to get excited about. Sure, it’s everything we’ve come to expect from Best Coast: beautifully bummed and super chill. But it sort of coasts without ever really building to a place that will make you want to stick around. It’s 12 tracks that all sound too similar, making California Nights just okay.
Crazy for You was so hard to resist. It sucked you in from the first notes and seemed to poignantly capture every post-adolescent aspect of life, from constantly feeling lost, to one-sided relationships with flaky guys, to being stoned and careless. The Only Place carried that torch, but was a little watered down in places. And Nights is just missing any sense of that urgency altogether. “Feeling” has a fresh guitar melody, but nothing else separates it from any other Best Coast song you’ve heard. “In My Eyes” is also a less appealing version of something they’ve certainly done better in the past. It’s almost as if their listeners have grown up since Crazy for You, but Best Coast somehow got left behind.
There are flickers of potential on Nights in songs like “Heaven Sent”, an undeniably addictive surf pop song, and the smartly written lyrics of “When Will I Change”. Cosentino is at her best when she’s not over singing and she’s capturing the essence of being a stunted woman-child, more so then when she’s saying the same old clichéd things about California’s beautiful coast (the title track). Even if it’s set to a gorgeous instrumental, it feels like pandering to the masses, and Best Coast has done and can do better.
Cosentino is a kickass songwriter and when she gets it right, she really gets it. Unfortunately, California Nights is too lightweight and lacking. It needs those moments of piercing heartbreak and intimacy Cosentino and Bruno have always perfected in the past. Rather than evolving, they’ve taken a step back, and though it’s not too far, it’s far enough that it isn’t relatable or original, and it leaves way too much to be desired.
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