Released on Mexican Summer in summer 2010, with a summer front cover and references to the summer state of California.. Best Coast are the sound of summer. Best Coast have two recording members (incorporating a drummer for live performances), the traditional Garage Rock line up of guitarist, drummer and a bassist. They play relationship fuelled Garage Rock songs influenced by Surf Rock groups of the 60's and focus on sounding 'indie'. The music is distorted and fast paced, with songs lasting about two and a half minutes.
With the basics aside, we can look in depth at this album... yeah... Because this album is so deep and hard to digest, right??? No. Bethany Cosentino is a good singer, she's not too whiny and unbearable like say, Sleigh Bells. Her lyrics are a mixed bag, on one hand we have these great questions she asks herself about love and looks, then we have small sentences like "I wish my cat could talk", which just receives a 'what the fuck Bethany?' by myself. You could just listen to one track to understand the whole album and 'Boyfriend' does just that. With a well structured track about wanting a taken man, with a great vocal of desperation and emotion.
I'm not going to waste time writing about each individual song, because this is a 13 track album, standing at just 31 minutes. What you get is sweet vocals over a gritty instrumentation, which may appeal to some, but for the more elitist of music fans, this isn't what you want. You need to be in the mood to listen to this album, which is a little disappointing because the majority of Pitchfork readers are sad and lonely.
I feel a sense of irony when listening to this, it's described as a summer album and it has references to summer and just generally Carry's a happy, bright description. This isn't the case at all, it's actually very dark, with saddening lyrics and sharp guitar work which just isn't happy sounding. You may be fooled, but I'm not, this is a winter album to me. It's cold and really depressing, tracks like 'When The Sun Don't Shine' may be fast paced, but it's extremely shadowed in lyrics of loss, whilst the music has a complete different mood.
'When I'm With You' was released as a single, it has the same, boring guitar sound, but with a bigger drum sound and distorted vocals. it's the last track, but it doesn't matter where it's placed, everything follows the same sound, the same pattern, the same lyrical themes and the same backing vocal melodies, it's a little amateur. One track, 'Goodbye' has cheesy lyrics, but has a dynamical sound rather than the flat sounding tracks like 'Our Deal'. The Phil Spector influence shows with 'I Want You' with the 'Be My Baby' drumming which is becoming common as a basic form of song structure.
This album doesn't carry much significance, it's not an amazing album like some say, its not even a good album. It's pretty standard, with good vocals and a gritty sound. I have many gripes with this album, the sound doesn't differ, the backing vocals are the same 'wooo oooo woooo' type shit on every track. The drumming sounds terrible in places, like with the title track, where it just sounds messy and live. Some tracks sound very dense, with guitar work using the distortion pedal a little too much. Any form of melancholy is lost with vocal whines and that ever lasting distortion.
~Eddie
6.0
