Best Coast – Crazy For You (Wichita)
3/5
By: Jamie Russell
It's easy to picture Bethany Cosentino (Best Coast) and Nathan Williams (Wavves) hand in hand as they take a running jump off some sundrenched California pier, overseen by that ginger cat - the seemingly ever-present moggy that features on the cover of both new albums. He's in Best Coast's press photos too, and to tell you the truth I can't help but feel a little chill every time he appears. It's as if he knows something. And perhaps he does. Surely it's no mere coincidence that his arrival on the scene also marks the purging of Nathan's distortion pedals and the "blissed-out-drone" of Bethany's Pocahaunted days. In 'Goodbye', track 3 of Crazy For You, Bethany sings "I wish my cat could talk" - and you have to wonder what he would say if he could. Perhaps he would tell you how he masterminded their respective journeys from lo to mid-fi, like some sort of hairy and charming record executive. How he had this whole summer planned out. And so there he sits on the pier, contentedly purring as the pair splash about below in the deep clarity and melody of the August surf… A disturbing (and not altogether relevant) thought.
Felines aside, Crazy For You is certainly a departure from Cosentino's drone days and could also turn out to be a bit of an opinion splitter. It's such a wholehearted immersion into the teeming adolescence of beach bound garage-pop (complete with unapologetically abrupt song openings, vintage oversexed twee and great unwashed reams of crunching guitar) that you could be forgiven for feeling that the whole enterprise was maybe a little shallow. Cosentino certainly sets the emotional pace with 'Boyfriend', a straight-up tale of teenage girlish woe - "there's nothing worse than sitting all alone at home and waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting by the phone". We've seen these dinky rhymes before and the sentiment is no revelation, so you might ask what's left in between the sand dunes of such familiar territory. But then, of course, this is the nature of the Best Coast pastiche. We are talking about adolescence here - arguably the most shallow, yet viscerally emotional moment in all of our lives. It would almost be insincere to relive this kind of music, this time round burdening it with the baggage of 'growing up and getting a little perspective'. Crazy For You is not about perspective, Crazy For You is more concerned with dunking you right in there, where you can't tell your Ray-Bans from your elbow.
It's on the record's more intoxicating, nostalgic tangents that Best Coast succeed - the vintage guitar rhythms of 'Summer Mood', the side-to-side sway of Cosentino's delivery in 'Our Deal' - although Crazy For You's thrashier moments are quite clearly the main headliners. Which is a bit of pity, as it makes for a samey mix of songs, despite some absolutely charming highlights. The end of 'Each and Every Day' for instance is a beautifully whimsical counter balance for the heady rock that precedes it. But there I go again, asking for a little more complexity than Best Coast could possibly be aiming for. Ultimately, time will tell if this record is the cat's meow - but for me, it sits too much in the eye of the beholder to be one of this summer's unequivocally great releases.
Artists in this article: Best Coast
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment