Best Coast, Crazy For You
[Mexican Summer]
Reviewed by: Chris Bosman
Nostalgia is a funny thing, especially when you look at it through the lens of how commercial art has attempted to co-opt it in recent years. We’ve seen movie adaptations of X-Men, Transformers and Iron Man, as well as reboots of old movie franchises from Batman, Superman, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Toy Story, and Terminator. It’s marketed nostalgia, implicitly promising something that will take you back to reading those old comics, or playing with those old toys, or watching those old films.
It’s been happening in music, too, though in a more subtle way. Artists like Washed Out, Toro y Moi and Memory Tapes attempt to recontextualize 80s synth pop into something a little fuzzier, a lot sadder, and certainly backwards reaching, even as it has spawned a new genre in chillwave. Meanwhile, groups with almost interchangeable names– Surfer Blood, Eternal Summers, Wavves, Beach Fossils– have reappropriated 50s doo-wop, or 60s girl groups, or 70s surf-rock, or even the poppier aspects of 90s grunge to engender a similar sense of nostalgia.
The difficulty in aiming for this feeling is finding a balance. If not handled with an obvious care and reverence for the source material, the attempt becomes transparent as a quick cash-in, created not due to a deep love but due to a current trend. On the other hand, if nothing new is brought to the table, the whole exercise becomes pointless. Without some original take on that old nostalgia, a listener will simply retreat back to those old records.
Bethany Cosentino, the creative force behind L.A. trio Best Coast, succeeds in tapping into that sense of nostalgia because she’s so unconcerned with tapping into it. Never once over the course of the 13 tracks on the band’s debut album, Crazy For You, does anything sound calculated. Instead, it sounds like a girl who grew up around music, listening to all of the aforementioned genres, synthesized them into something she was feeling at the moment, creating something paradoxically lasting in the process.
All of those decades mentioned earlier rear their heads on Crazy For You, with varying degrees of import. The title track is more surf-y, while “Summer Mood” is something Phil Spector would have loved to get his hands on. “Our Deal” conjures up images of black-and-white video of women in sundresses, snapping their fingers while undemonstratively shimmying back and forth as they sing backup vocals. And if Weezer were fronted by a girl, they might have put “Bratty B” on their first album. Importantly, this isn’t gimmickry. It’s more organic than even homage. It’s simply a natural extension of all those styles, and one of the progenitors of the current booming trend of summery, lo-fi rock and roll.
There’s a sense of permanence to these songs, too. Young Girl pining over The Guy is one of those topics that will never get dated, and it fits Best Coast’s style. Yeah, these topics have been done before, and maybe done better, but Cosentino has a take for a new decade, where “I want to kill you, but then I’d miss you,” qualifies as romantic and promising not to be “such a brat” is a compromise. The melodies accompanying these sentiments are strong throughout, to be certain. There are no instant sing-alongs on Crazy For You, but what they lack in immediacy they make up for in stamina; these hooks creep up into the subconscious, begging repeated listens. While there isn’t an “Oh my God” moment on Crazy For You, it more than makes up it for with a solid baker’s dozen of lasting pop gems.
Rating: 82%