Breaking Bands: Best Coast

08 February 2010

by Nathan Jolly

From: California 
Sounds Like: The Ronettes 
Key Track: Sun Was High (So Was I) 
Website: myspace.com/bestycoasty

The muffled opening bars of Best Coast’s single Sun Was High (So Was I) combined with Bethany Cosentino’s impossibly Spector-esque vocal performance immediate recalls the girl groups of the ‘60s such as The Ronettes or The Crystals. Indeed, had one stumbled across this single in a record store, without prior knowledge, it would be an easy assumption to make that it washed up alongside a bunch of other dusty 45s from a bygone era.

Like many before her, Bethany Cosentino moved from sunny California to New York, with the idea of studying creative writing in Brooklyn. It was while in New York that Cosentino began heavily listening to Californian pop music from the ‘50s and ‘60s in a bid to counter the terminal chill of New York. Immediately the pangs started, and it wasn’t long before she was back in LA, chronicling her California dreaming with the aide of Bobb Bruno.

Best Coast chronicle a time that Cosentino never lived in, and in evoking the naïve innocence of endless summers, transistor radios, going steady, and other youthful pursuits, she deftly keys into a sense of nostalgia for a California that probably never existed. However the hazy production and reverb drenched sound also references touchstones such as The Jesus and Mary Chain and a host of shoegaze bands, a lot of whom shared the same Spector fascination as Best Coast.

Five 7inches have been released so far on a number of indie labels, and with each release Best Coast are gathering momentum - snatching a Best New Music nod from Pitchfork for When I’m With You as well as being earmarked as one of Spin magazine’s 25 Must Hear Artists from the CMJ Festival - which was appropriately accompanied by a gushing review of the bands aesthetic.

Currently on tour with fellow buzz band The Vivian Girls, before doing a short run with Surfer Blood in March, Best Coast have another 7 inch single ready for release - through PPM Recordings, who have issued releases by No Age, Liars and Wavves - before dropping their debut album, which will be released by the excellent PopFrenzy label locally, although no date has been set. An Australian tour is also being planned for later this year - further proof that Best Coast's work ethic runs at odds with the woozy, lazy feel of the bands music.