Best Coast
Jewel City
2.5/5 stars
Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno charmed with Best Coast’s explosive and distinctive blend of lo-fi, sunshine and surf pop. Cosentino’s raw, ‘50s girl group wails blended through relentless guitar and, with lyrics likable in their frankness, convinced a good number of us that, indeed, west coast best coast.
That said, Best Coast’s latest seven-song mini-album, “Fade Away,” is frustrating. It’s caught somewhere between the fuzzy, punchy garage sound of their debut album, “Crazy for You,” and the more polished reverb of their sophomore album, “The Only Place.” The songs are longer but shallower. The lyrics are darker, and the lightheartedness and rashness are gone. All the qualities that we accepted and eventually loved about the band, from catchy melodies to humdrum lyrics to sticky rhythms, have lost their shine and faded away.
The first track, ‘This Lonely Morning,’ has a promising start and strikes listeners with a clean, fast-paced beat. The lyrics kick off with Cosentino, earnest and unfeigned as usual: “I wait for you to call / but sometimes you don’t call at all.” The song (along with the rest of the album) hits its decline at the chorus, however. With the stage now set, the rest of the album features more heavily produced and drawn-out melodies over hurried rhythms. Each song sounds more or less like the next, and every chorus features one—maybe two—lines that are repeated a couple dozen times. The songs become all the more muddled and stale, capitalizing on the old criticisms that Best Coast is essentially a single melody with a few changes here or there.
The album, while lacking in variation, manages to be both calculated and inconsistent. Part of it might be the trite and apparently formulaic songwriting on Consentino’s part, but there’s a newfound sense that the band is in the midst of an attempt to create a more layered and sweeping sound. They lose out, though, as they move away from the serendipitous bursts of carefree sloppiness that grounded previous albums and ingrained Cosentino’s yearning choruses with authenticity. On ‘Fear of My Identity,’ the first verse sounds tinny and, if you can believe it, like a less well-rhymed and less thrilling Avril Lavigne song. But when we hit the reprise, we’re struck by a satisfying guitar line. The drums keep the song going, and Cosentino’s “You taught me that my heart would grow old, oh-oh-old” is immediately electrifying. And with a lead-in guitar that sounds like a slowed-down transition from the song before, the album’s namesake, ‘Fade Away,’ is a rock ballad that drags and doesn’t hit its groove until halfway through.
‘Baby I’m Crying’ is most successful in incorporating a new, multi-layered soundscape. The background is delicate and unfolding, and this track best exemplifies the changed Cosentino and this mini-album’s intentions. Though the title might convey otherwise, she’s become more than the stoned cat-lover who records garage songs in her bedroom about boys. We believe Cosentino’s clear voice: “Maybe one day you’ll be the one.” There’s less repetition and more engagement; it's less haphazard and more deliberate. The slow serenade offers a new side to Best Coast, and we begin to remember exactly why we started listening to them in the first place.
The final song, ‘I Don’t Know How,’ brings us full circle. It reconciles all of Best Coast—what they were, are and want to be. The lyrics are just as conversational, the rhymes are just as simplistic and the choruses are just as repetitive. “I don’t know how” is still stated countless times, but rather than dig into your skin, it slowly settles into you. Cosentino is confessional (sounding almost like Karen Carpenter), and you find yourself swaying and drawn in to her solid timbre. The drum pattern has a hint of western swing, reminding of the rocking waves that first inspired the band’s name. The song is uncomplicated, genuine and cultivated. By the end, we’ve sped up, we’re drawn in and we’re encompassed. We understand Best Coast, and “Fade Away,” a little bit more: “I’ve been through the summer / stuck around for the cold.”
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