Crazy for You by Best Coast
LABEL: Mexican Summer 

Perhaps, the most apt and potentially trite criticism that can be made about Best Coast’s debut LP is that it’s too simple. Thematically, the album rarely ventures beyond the realms of unrequited love and, when it does, it doesn’t seem to go anywhere more significant.  “I wish he was my boyfriend,” vocalist Bethany Cosentino sings on the album’s opener, unsurprisingly titled "Boyfriend." Later, on “Summer Mood,” Cosentino remarks that “There’s something about the summer that makes me moody,” which somehow manages to be both uncomplicated and painfully vague. “I hate sleeping alone,” she croons on “When I’m with You.” Few albums come closer to replicating the thematic nuance of a thirteen-year old’s diary, and even fewer, certainly, use the word "you" as often. A conservative count? 124 times.

You get the point. Unequivocally the type of simplicity expected and maligned in pop music (make no mistake, this is unabashedly pop), Best Coast’s lyrical simplicity might be grounds for disapproval. And yet, somehow, it works. Somehow, in spite of the thematic monotony and lyrical repetition, Best Coast have created an album that defies the logic of what happens when you write really awful pop songs.

At least on the first listen. Sadly, despite the promise and simple pleasure in listening to this album for the first time, things tend to fall apart on future listens. And it’s not because it sounds bad. Costenino and Bruno create the kind of attractive and unassuming lo-fi that the indie kids are in love with right now—and it works. It’s sonically undemanding and indolent, the kind of music that can only exist in earnest along the shore. It hums and jangles, and Costenino’s multi-tracked harmonization adds volumes to the instrumentation’s coastal tenor. The problem: this album is the musical equivalent to really cheap bubblegum: After one listen, the flavor is all but gone.

But perhaps we are expecting too much—and maybe that’s Best Coast’s latent genius. The world is a complicated place. At a time where gadgets have usurped mass consciousness, and when every single human action and emotion—including love—seems drenched with irony and co-opted by culture, Best Coast, in all their simplicity and earnestness emerge in opposition. And for that we can only applaud them. Perhaps, simple is exactly what we need.


REVIEWED BY RICARDO BILTON
RICARDO’S FAVE TRACKS: “Boyfriend” • “When the Sun Don’t Shine” • “When I’m With You”