I Like Best Coast.

Ok, so it seems I’m late arriving at Best Coast. The premium towel-space is already taken, and the volleyball has long been in progress. But hey, the more the merrier, right? Bethany Cosentino has been out and about doing things as Best Coast for quite a while now, getting name-dropped in all the right place (and some of the wrong ones), but something – I don’t even remember what – always discouraged me from checking her/them out. Maybe it was cos they seem to get tied so neatly into that whole “deteriorated tapes going to the beach” jive that was/is doing the rounds? Maybe Pitchfork et al seemed to be sidling up a little too strong a little too soon? Maybe the fact I’m writing this crap which will mean zilch to anyone reading this in the archives in years to come is case in point? Anyway, forget all that, all that matters now is that I’m here, I’ve found a parking space, I’ve got Best Coast’s “Something In The Way” single on the stereo, and it’s a flat-out WINNER – brilliant in a way that needs no explanation or aesthetic pigeon-holing from anyone. The three songs here are fifty years-worth of yearning tough-girl pop refined to perfection, immaculate of melody, rough of execution, raw and sweet of feeling, sounding so compelling and naturalistic you won’t even clock the extent to which they're a pastiche of the greats ‘til you’re on your eighth listen.

Sure, it’s got that drowsy, just-got-outta-bed, faux-four track feel to it that’ll have everyone who still has the good grace to write something before posting the link reaching for those easy invocations of spliffs at the beach and sad, sexy ‘70s polaroids and leaving it at that. And yeah, why not, it’s a nice sound - but it’s the SONGS that are carrying this one. Maybe they’re not all special and unique, but you know what? Fuck ‘special & unique’ songs – these ones are happy just being GOOD, sewn from the same tri-chord cloth of happy/sad formalised joy and heartbreak as rest of their noble lineage. I’ll take “Something In The Way” over the other (‘special’, ‘unique’) songs that share that name any day, and “Wish He Was You” speaks for itself from the title on down – a song maybe a bit too lyrically near-the-knuckle for any girls to have sung back in the ‘60s, but dammit, it’s probably what they were thinking as they knocked out their nth ‘tears in the rain’ style number.

This is not music that’s new and overhyped and to be feared. This is music that’s been here forever. I know I’ve already referenced the ‘60s a bit, but you know what? Cut away all the drowsy, gauzy boombox shit (WE NEED NEW DESCRIBING WORDS), put Best Coast in the studio with some reformed hippie production guy, make her do twelve songs instead of three, put some colour-saturated photo of a flower on the front, sell the damn thing in Sam Goody for £12.99 and you’ve got yourself one hell of a good Juliana Hatfield record. It’s not music for jumping up and down and making a fuss to, but if you like to shimmy then it’s good enough shimmying music for you to shimmyyourself half to death, beach or no beach.

http://www.myspace.com/bestycoasty

Labels: Best Coast, I like