19-05-2012, 11:22
online listen
sort of a She & Him sound
and almost as cute
really like the title track (the clip)
critics may be right about the lyrics
kind of shallow
nice voice and good music though
makes the list
1.7 from me and a converted 1.5 from the pros at allmusic
from the album - The Only Place
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U63pQsUH-OA
released May 15th, 2012
![[Image: s46402rsze8.jpg]](http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drs400/s464/s46402rsze8.jpg)
Bio - from allmusic
Bethany Cosentino was no stranger to the stage when she began working on recordings with bandmate Bobb Bruno under
the name Best Coast in 2009. A former child actress, Cosentino had started writing songs in her teens, and had
garnered a strong online following by the time she was 17 thanks to a handful of squeaky-clean pop tunes she made
available on her MySpace page under the nom de teen pop Bethany Sharayah. "I had interest from major labels," she
said in a 2009 interview with PopSense. "And it was kind of overwhelming and I realized that I wasn't ready to be a
âpop princess.'" In the years that followed, Cosentino put in time as a member of the spacy experimental pop group
Pocahaunted and went to school in New York. She moved back to Los Angeles in 2009, at which point she started
working with Bruno on Best Coast's first demos.
Drawing inspiration from '60s surf rock and girl groups, Best Coast's noisy lo-fi sound gave a nod to
contemporaneous acts like Hot Lava, the Vivian Girls, and Brilliant Colors. Best Coast's first year saw a flurry of
little releases: a self-titled 7" single on Art Fag; a cassette tape release, Where the Boys Are, on the U.K. label
Blackest Rainbow; a split 7", Up All Night, on Atelier Ciseaux; an EP, Make You Mine, on Group Tightener; and a
self-titled 7" on Black Iris. Best Coast had become something of a sensation by the time 2009 came to a close; the
band enjoyed a bit of attention from the media (notably from Nylon magazine), and Make You Mine made its way onto a
few year-end lists. The band embarked on its first U.S. tour early the following year, sharing the stage with the
Vivian Girls. Their profile continued to rise in 2010 with the release of "When I'm with You," which was accompanied
by an adorably cute video. The duo signed to Mexican Summer Records and began work on a debut album. Meanwhile,
Cosentino made a summer single for Converse (a collaboration with Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij and rapper Kid
Cudi) and Best Coast added a full-time drummer, ex-Vivian Girl Ali Koehler. The group's album Crazy for You, which
featured Cosentino's cat, Snacks, on the cover, was released in July.
Best Coast's star continued to rise over the next two years, with plenty of touring and festival appearances. In
August of 2011 Drew Barrymore directed the West Side Story-meets-Warriors inspired video for "Our Deal" off of Crazy
For You. In this time a lot of attention was paid in the press to Cosentino's very public relationship with Wavves'
Nathan Williams. The two collaborated and toured together throughout the end of 2011. Also, at the end of the year
Ali Koehler was ousted from the band. In May 2012, Best Coast's sophomore LP The Only Place was released by Mexican
Summer. Produced by Jon Brion, it boasted a more professional recording quality than anything the group had done to
date.
Album Review - from allmusic
For their second album, The Only Place, California duo Best Coast hired Jon Brion as producer. Right away it's clear
that the fuzzily lo-fi noise pop sound of their debut, Crazy for You, was a thing of the past, and the band was
looking to smooth things out quite noticeably. Hiring Brion to produce a noise pop record is like asking Rothko to
paint your mailbox. What he and the band have done is replace the simplistic drone of the distorted guitars with a
more layered, much janglier sound, added tons of space to the arrangements, and made sure each song gets the sonic
approach it needs instead of the set-it-up-and-record-it style of Crazy. The result is an album that has a classic
pop/rock sound that anyone who's heard an R.E.M. or Beach Boys or Springsteen record will instantly identify with
and understand. It may disappoint anyone who wanted Crazy for You, Pt. 2, but the band didn't make this record for
those people. On a sonic level alone, the record works very well. Bethany Cosentino reliably writes super-catchy
melodies and sings them winningly, Bobb Bruno does a fine job filling in the songs with hooky guitar lines, and
Brion adds the little touches that have made his name as a producer. The uptempo songs have a light bounce that will
have people bopping along, the ballads have fully realized arrangements that sound dreamy as can be, and the whole
record has a warmth that was missing from anything the band did before. The problem lies with Cosentino's awful
lyrics. What seemed cute and only a little awkward in the past is now extremely clunky and slightly ridiculous. That
her lyrics are shallow isn't such a big deal -- it didn't ruin Crazy -- but the real problem is that this time they
are gratingly personal to the point of being like diary entries (as on "My Life" with the lines "My mom was right/I
don't wanna die/I wanna live my life") or smug (on her title-track ode to California that includes the deathless
rhyme "We've got the ocean, we've got the babes/We've got the sun, we've got the waves") or just plain boring and/or
embarrassing (most everywhere else). Instead of making Crazy for You, Pt. 2, she's made Crazy for Me, Me, Me. When
lyrics are so endlessly, inwardly directed as they are on The Only Place, there needs to be some spark of something
interesting cooking in there, or the result will be an album that looks like a delicious cake but tastes like
sawdust and chalk when you bite into it. Give the group credit for taking a step forward from Crazy for You: the
album sounds great, full of catchy and well-crafted songs. Too bad it all falls apart so drastically when you factor
in Cosentino's disastrous lyrics.
Track Listing
1. The Only Place
2. Why I Cry
3. Last Year
4. My Life
5. No One Like You
6. How They Want Me to Be
7. Better Girl
8. Do You Still Love Me Like You Used To
9. Dreaming My Life Away
10. Let's Go Home
11. Up All Night
sort of a She & Him sound
and almost as cute
really like the title track (the clip)
critics may be right about the lyrics
kind of shallow
nice voice and good music though
makes the list
1.7 from me and a converted 1.5 from the pros at allmusic
from the album - The Only Place
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U63pQsUH-OA
released May 15th, 2012
Bio - from allmusic
Bethany Cosentino was no stranger to the stage when she began working on recordings with bandmate Bobb Bruno under
the name Best Coast in 2009. A former child actress, Cosentino had started writing songs in her teens, and had
garnered a strong online following by the time she was 17 thanks to a handful of squeaky-clean pop tunes she made
available on her MySpace page under the nom de teen pop Bethany Sharayah. "I had interest from major labels," she
said in a 2009 interview with PopSense. "And it was kind of overwhelming and I realized that I wasn't ready to be a
âpop princess.'" In the years that followed, Cosentino put in time as a member of the spacy experimental pop group
Pocahaunted and went to school in New York. She moved back to Los Angeles in 2009, at which point she started
working with Bruno on Best Coast's first demos.
Drawing inspiration from '60s surf rock and girl groups, Best Coast's noisy lo-fi sound gave a nod to
contemporaneous acts like Hot Lava, the Vivian Girls, and Brilliant Colors. Best Coast's first year saw a flurry of
little releases: a self-titled 7" single on Art Fag; a cassette tape release, Where the Boys Are, on the U.K. label
Blackest Rainbow; a split 7", Up All Night, on Atelier Ciseaux; an EP, Make You Mine, on Group Tightener; and a
self-titled 7" on Black Iris. Best Coast had become something of a sensation by the time 2009 came to a close; the
band enjoyed a bit of attention from the media (notably from Nylon magazine), and Make You Mine made its way onto a
few year-end lists. The band embarked on its first U.S. tour early the following year, sharing the stage with the
Vivian Girls. Their profile continued to rise in 2010 with the release of "When I'm with You," which was accompanied
by an adorably cute video. The duo signed to Mexican Summer Records and began work on a debut album. Meanwhile,
Cosentino made a summer single for Converse (a collaboration with Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij and rapper Kid
Cudi) and Best Coast added a full-time drummer, ex-Vivian Girl Ali Koehler. The group's album Crazy for You, which
featured Cosentino's cat, Snacks, on the cover, was released in July.
Best Coast's star continued to rise over the next two years, with plenty of touring and festival appearances. In
August of 2011 Drew Barrymore directed the West Side Story-meets-Warriors inspired video for "Our Deal" off of Crazy
For You. In this time a lot of attention was paid in the press to Cosentino's very public relationship with Wavves'
Nathan Williams. The two collaborated and toured together throughout the end of 2011. Also, at the end of the year
Ali Koehler was ousted from the band. In May 2012, Best Coast's sophomore LP The Only Place was released by Mexican
Summer. Produced by Jon Brion, it boasted a more professional recording quality than anything the group had done to
date.
Album Review - from allmusic
For their second album, The Only Place, California duo Best Coast hired Jon Brion as producer. Right away it's clear
that the fuzzily lo-fi noise pop sound of their debut, Crazy for You, was a thing of the past, and the band was
looking to smooth things out quite noticeably. Hiring Brion to produce a noise pop record is like asking Rothko to
paint your mailbox. What he and the band have done is replace the simplistic drone of the distorted guitars with a
more layered, much janglier sound, added tons of space to the arrangements, and made sure each song gets the sonic
approach it needs instead of the set-it-up-and-record-it style of Crazy. The result is an album that has a classic
pop/rock sound that anyone who's heard an R.E.M. or Beach Boys or Springsteen record will instantly identify with
and understand. It may disappoint anyone who wanted Crazy for You, Pt. 2, but the band didn't make this record for
those people. On a sonic level alone, the record works very well. Bethany Cosentino reliably writes super-catchy
melodies and sings them winningly, Bobb Bruno does a fine job filling in the songs with hooky guitar lines, and
Brion adds the little touches that have made his name as a producer. The uptempo songs have a light bounce that will
have people bopping along, the ballads have fully realized arrangements that sound dreamy as can be, and the whole
record has a warmth that was missing from anything the band did before. The problem lies with Cosentino's awful
lyrics. What seemed cute and only a little awkward in the past is now extremely clunky and slightly ridiculous. That
her lyrics are shallow isn't such a big deal -- it didn't ruin Crazy -- but the real problem is that this time they
are gratingly personal to the point of being like diary entries (as on "My Life" with the lines "My mom was right/I
don't wanna die/I wanna live my life") or smug (on her title-track ode to California that includes the deathless
rhyme "We've got the ocean, we've got the babes/We've got the sun, we've got the waves") or just plain boring and/or
embarrassing (most everywhere else). Instead of making Crazy for You, Pt. 2, she's made Crazy for Me, Me, Me. When
lyrics are so endlessly, inwardly directed as they are on The Only Place, there needs to be some spark of something
interesting cooking in there, or the result will be an album that looks like a delicious cake but tastes like
sawdust and chalk when you bite into it. Give the group credit for taking a step forward from Crazy for You: the
album sounds great, full of catchy and well-crafted songs. Too bad it all falls apart so drastically when you factor
in Cosentino's disastrous lyrics.
Track Listing
1. The Only Place
2. Why I Cry
3. Last Year
4. My Life
5. No One Like You
6. How They Want Me to Be
7. Better Girl
8. Do You Still Love Me Like You Used To
9. Dreaming My Life Away
10. Let's Go Home
11. Up All Night
