Best Coast

All Music Guide:

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 ‘pop 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.

Wikipedia:

Best Coast is an American surf band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 2009. The band consists of duo Bethany Cosentino (born Bethany Sharayah Cosentino, November 3, 1986) and Bobb Bruno, with several drummers having joined the band for live performances, most notably Vivian Girls drummer Ali Koehler.

The band's music is often categorized under the subgenres of surf, garage rock, and lo-fi.

History [edit]

Best Coast began with Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno meeting through shows around Los Angeles in 2009. Consentino, a former child actress, began writing songs in her teens and eventually developed enough of a following through her Myspace page to receive attention from major labels. Though the attention was well received, she was uninterested in becoming a "Pop princess" and moved to New York to go to school. In 2009, she moved back to Los Angeles which point she started working with Bruno on Best Coast's first demos.

Their acquaintance was initially rumored to have been that Bruno was Cosentino's babysitter through a joke during an interview that was edited to appear true.

The band is recognizable for their fuzzy, low-fidelity sound in the vein of surf rock.

The band is signed to the labels Mexican Summer (US) and Wichita Records (Europe), who released their debut album Crazy for You in July 2010. Prior to this the band released a number of 7" singles on smaller independent labels, including Make You Mine on Group Tightener and Something in the Way on Dean Allen Spunt's (of No Age) Post Present Medium label. The band made a decision not to include material from these releases on their debut album.

In April 2010, Best Coast released a music video for their single, "When I'm with You".

In June 2011, the band released their song "Gone Again" as the second single in Adult Swim's second series of the Kia Singles Program. It was accompanied by a music video.

On August 2, 2011, the band released the music video for their single "Our Deal", directed by Drew Barrymore and featuring Chloë Grace Moretz, Miranda Cosgrove, Tyler Posey, Donald Glover, Shailene Woodley and Alia Shawkat.

On October 18, 2011, "When I'm With You" was a featured track in the Rocksmith video game series.

Best Coast was the first act announced for the Big Day Out 2012 lineup. The band also played the main stage at Metallica's first Orion Music + More Festival in 2012.

In an interview with coupdemainmagazine, they were quoted saying that their new album is different to their debut Crazy for You because their "song writing style was pretty different" and they are now recording in "a much more professional studio". The resulting album The Only Place was released in 2012.

Best Coast has toured with notable bands like The Decemberists, and opening for Green Day during their March/April 2013 U.S. tour.