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 rock duo formed in Los Angeles, California in 2009. The band consists of songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Bethany Cosentino and guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno. Cosentino, a former child actress, began writing music as a teenager and was formerly a member of the experimentalist drone group Pocahaunted. After a brief tenure at college in New York City, Cosentino returned to the West Coast and began recording lo-fi demos with Bruno, whom she met in the Los Angeles music scene.

After a string of 7-inch and cassette-only singles, the band signed to Mexican Summer, who issued the band's debut, Crazy for You, in 2010. Crazy for You became an unexpected commercial success following Internet buzz surrounding the duo. Best Coast added a touring drummer, Ali Koehler of Vivian Girls, and spent much of 2011 on the road for festival appearances and tour dates. Best Coast's sophomore effort, The Only Place, was released in 2012 and featured a cleaner sound than their previous releases. The duo is currently preparing to release an EP, Fade Away (2013), and plan to record their third studio album in 2014.

The duo's music is often categorized under the subgenres of surf pop, garage rock, and lo-fi, and the band was primarily inspired by 1950/60s surf rock/girl groups.

Contents

History[edit]

Formation and early releases (2009)[edit]

Best Coast was formed in 2009 by Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno in Los Angeles, California. Cosentino had been around the Los Angeles music scene from a young age, and had also involved herself in talent competitions, musicals, audition tapes and commercials for Little Caesar's. She began writing music at age 15, inspired by Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, as well Weezer and Blink-182. Cosentino began uploading her music to MySpace under the name "Bethany Sharayah". She was approached and offered record deals from major labels in her teens, but resisted as they desired to mold her into a "pop princess" type. In the mid-2000s, she met Amanda Brown at the downtown LA DIY venue the Smell. Brown attempted to act as a "big sister" to Cosentino, who seemed "sort of depressed, missing music, [and] feeling a bit weird about some of her friends." The two began playing together in the experimentalist, drone group Pocahaunted. Pocahaunted's music had no traditional lyrics, and instead contained wordless vocalizations from Cosentino and Brown. The collaboration began in 2006 and released several cassette-only recordings on local label Not Not Fun. The recordings were supervised and produced by Bobb Bruno, a multi-instrumentalist stalwart in the city's music scene.

Pocahaunted achieved minor success (at one point opening for Sonic Youth), but Cosentino left the project to pursue creative writing at the Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts in New York City. Studying journalism and creative nonfiction, she read Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace and other authors she enjoyed and she interned at The Fader, where she penned a fashion column. Cosentino lived in Brooklyn and all but abandoned her musical pursuits, and soon fell into a mundane routine and seasonal depression in her second semester, feeling miserable. Having grown up on the constantly sunny and warm West Coast, she found the city "stressful, congested and cold," and based much of her nonfiction on California. Although she felt she would be letting her family and friends down by dropping out, she phoned her mother to come help her gather her belongings and return to Los Angeles over the course of a weekend in March/April 2009. Returning to La Crescenta, she lived with her mom and began work as a part-time sales associate for Lush, but felt immediately inspired to write new music, using her acoustic guitar to cope with anxiety. She informed Bruno, and the two began laying down demos in his home studio. The band's first release, "Sun Was High (And So Was I)", was released by Art Fag and was the first of a string of 7-inch singles.

The band's second 7-inch single, "When I'm with You", was financed by Black Iris, which functioned as both a music and film production agency. After their first experience recording with live drums and "real" production, they made a conscious effort to stray away from their original, more lo-fi and hazy sound. A collection of 7-inch singles on Art Fag and Black Iris alerted Adam Shore, owner of buzz-generating website The Daily Swarm, who became the group's manager. Jeffery Kaye, label manager of Mexican Summer, discovered the band's music online. These releases included a cassette tape release, Where the Boys Are, on the U.K. label Blackest Rainbow; a split 7", "Up All Night", on Atelier Ciseaux; and an EP, Make You Mine, on Group Tightener. Margaret Reges writes that 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), 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.

Crazy for You and The Only Place (2010-12)[edit]

The duo recorded their debut album, Crazy for You, for Black Iris at Mexican Radio Studios in Echo Park, California from January to April 2010. Crazy for You, as the result of Internet buzz, became a mainstream success upon its July 2010 release. The album entered the Billboard 200 at number 36 with 10,000 units sold and also debuted at No. 10 on Digital Albums. The album's success led to maximum exposure: "the blogosphere was suddenly abuzz with talk about her album, her tweets, her personal life, her daily habits and even one of her cats." Alongside the quick, thunderous success came an intense level of scrutiny, vocal Internet haters and venom from selected critics, some of whom viewed Cosentino's material as anti-feminist. Crazy for You and its' sound, "simple and pungent songs […] toying with 1950s and ’60s melodic structures," had become something of a touchstone for Best Coast and adopted by several other bands. Cosentino hid her vocals behind layers of reverb and distortion, which was an extension of her onstage anxiety.

The band continued to gain popularity over the course of 2010 and 2011, due in part to touring and festival appearances. Ali Koehler of Vivian Girls became the band's interim touring drummer, but was ousted from the group at the end of 2011. During this period, much of the band's press consisted of details on Cosentino's very public relationship with Wavves' Nathan Williams. The two collaborated and toured together throughout 2011. The extensive touring schedule subsequently inspired the lyrical content of the band's sophomore effort, The Only Place (2012). Cosentino felt that her life had dramatically changed in the two years following its release, having never spent so much time away from home. The duo had a desire to create a record that "nobody was going to call lo-fi," and Bruno reached out to his former boss, producer/composer Jon Brion, known for his work on Kanye West's Late Registration (2005).

The Only Place, released in May 2012, was recorded at Capitol Records Studio B in Los Angeles, California. Cosentino and Bruno felt the production process for The Only Place was marked by a level of seriousness. While previous recording sessions were marked by goofing off and drinking, the duo took their sophomore effort more seriously and strove to create a different sound. The decision to work with producer Jon Brion was an effort to bring polish to the mixes. Brion, who admired Crazy for You and its' production, largely hoped to stay out of the way during sessions, only hoping to bring out Cosentino's vocals and hear the low-end of mixes more. Brion noted that the duo "were curious to not use the reverb thing as a crutch." Brion equipped the duo with vintage analog gear, and attempted to make great use of the studio's Les Paul-designed reverb chambers. Brion noted that Cosentino and Bruno "have a secret language," and he merely suggested a few different guitars.

Fade Away and third studio album (2013-present)[edit]

Best Coast's next release, a seven-track "mini album" called Fade Away, is due out October 22, 2013 on singer Bethany Cosentino's new label, Jewel City. The duo will begin production on their third studio album in November 2013, which is scheduled for a spring 2014 release.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

Musical style and influences[edit]

Best Coast was originally loosely inspired by The Beatles and The Beach Boys, as well as straightforward 1950s/1960s pop music. The band's music is often categorized under the subgenres of surf, garage rock, and lo-fi. "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," wrote Margaret Reges of Allmusic. Weezer and Blink-182 partially inspired Cosentino's songwriting, and Best Coast have covered the Blink-182 song "Dammit" in concert. Pitchfork Media writes that "Best Coast carry enough influence from 90s California pop-punk that they would've been right at home on a late-90s Warped Tour stage."

The band's second album, The Only Place, was developed with a flurry of influences: traditional country music (such as Loretta Lynn, Dusty Springfield and Patsy Cline), Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Drake's Take Care. Fade Away, the band's 2013 EP, was primarily inspired by Mazzy Star, Patsy Cline and My Bloody Valentine.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).