Best Coast is truly original

BEST COAST REMINDS me of everything that is indispensable about pop music. It’s easy to forget why you fell in love with music in the first place. It happens when you’re a kid. It’s usually one song, or maybe a couple of songs, that make you feel something new and exciting and enlivens a sensation you have never felt before. When I hear Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino sing, “Something in the way you say my name,” it makes me think of the first time I heard Ronnie Bennett Spector sing, “The night we met I knew I needed you so.”

Best Coast

It’s not sentimentality or nostalgia that gets my attention with Best Coast’s songs. Rather, Cosentino instantly and accurately plugs into the languish that made the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” so devastating and profound. In other words, she gets it.

“Be My Baby” is an electrifying narrative. Ronnie Spector’s performance perfectly captures a sense of longing . The song, shaded with producer Phil Spector’s fully ripened Wall of Sound, also sets the bar impossibly high. Her vision of what love can offer is, at best, illusive. “Be My Baby” fades after 2 minutes and 41 seconds, and nothing can possibly be the way she describes it. It’s a mirage, one rap moment of being moonstruck. I remember thinking on one occasion, How is it even possible that she knows exactly how I feel.

But, afterward, everything else is bound to be a disappointment. At the same time, that is precisely what makes “Be My Baby” so preposterously, undeniably captivating. I think that Tom Petty explains it pretty well, though not intentionally, in the song “American Girl,” when he sings about how capturing a perfect moment can be so elusive: “God, it’s so painful when something that’s so close is still so far out of reach.”

Ronnie Spector

For me, the responsiveness I found in “Be My Baby” created a standard that I still seek, in other songs. Only a handful of songs evoke similar ebullience. “American Girl,” “Kiss Me, Baby” (Brian Wilson), “Lightnin’ Strikes” (Lou Christie), “Untouchable” (Taylor Swift) and “Lose My Breath” (My Bloody Valentine) are among them. But, when you seek un’occhiata di cielo, you will often be disappointed because such moments are rare. Just like Tim Petty said.

That is why Best Coast is so enthralling. The 23-year-old Bethany Cosentino understands the conviction and daring contained in popular music’s best songs and, so far, has produced outstanding material.

When the Los Angeles native intones, “I hate sleeping alone” on “When I’m with You,” she reiterates possibly the most common theme in music. But, as is the case with any art, it’s how she conveys the sentiment that really matters.

Swathed in layers and layers of sound—which combines Richie Allen-influenced surf-rock guitar with Kevin Shields-style distorted reverb—Cosentino zestfully croons songs about lust, romantic intrigue and fear. In interviews, she calls her material “stoned love letters to imaginary boyfriends.” Sounds not entirely different from Brian Wilson’s comment in the mid-1960s that his songs are “a teenage symphony to God.”

When discussing Cosentino, there are easy comparisons. The so-called lo-fi movement is abundant with other female-led bands, notably the Vivian Girls and the Dum Dum Girls. While both bands deliver intriguing, accomplished performances on their recent albums, they lack Best Coast’s exigency. Cosentino has cited Phil Spector’s records as an influence.

Not surprisingly, then, there’s an unquestionably timeless quality to Cosentino’s material. She is not merely recreating the familiar, Cosentino is using it as a tableau to create something original. I do not see the same enterprise in the Vivian Girls and the Dum Dum Girls.

Because of Best Coast’s sound, the other obvious immediate comparison is Shields’ My Bloody Valentine, whose “Loveless” is one of rock’s music landmark albums. But Cosentino, with the assistance of Bobb Bruno, has created a string 7-inch vinyl singles that exclude the emotional detachment of Shields’ narratives.

Kevin Shields

In Shields’ hands, the approach was expertly applied as metonymy to heighten the sadness and darkness of the album’s material. In songs such as “Lose My Breath” and Soon,” the result was frequently stunning. “Loveless” influenced a generation of a musicians.

That undoubtedly includes Cosentino, whose style emphasizes intimacy rather than Shields’ disaffection. That’s because Cosentino is a true original who is creating something special and genuinely inspired with Best Coast. Inspired by the variety of moods and tones used by Lindsey Buckingham on Fleetwood Mac’s idiosyncratic “Tusk,” album, Cosentino is working on Best Coast’s first album, which she says will contain all new songs.

Tags: Best Coast, Bethany Cosentino, Bobb Bruno, Brian Wilson, Dum Dum Girls, Fleetwood Mac, Kevin Shields, Lindsey Buckingham, Lou Christie, My Bloody Valentine, Phil Spector, Richie Allen, Ronettes, Ronnie Spector, Taylor Swift, Vivian Girls