Best Coast - Crazy For You

The latest offering from the noise-rock scene based around LA’s Smell club (the venue that has spawned No Age, Abe Vigoda and Wavves) is, surprisingly, a sprightly breezy affair. The product of frontwoman and cat-lover Bethany Cosentino and multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno, it’s a nostalgic, innocent record based around crisp surf-pop melodies and uncomplicated, 1950’s girl-group lyrics. It’s perfectly charming and almost impossible not to like.

That’s Bethany’s cat Snacks on the cover (he also features on the artwork for Wavves’ King of The Beach and can allegedly be heard meowing on the band’s early demos) and she ‘wishes [he] could talk’ on ‘Goodbye’.  Her other interests extend to boys, boys, boys. On opener Boyfriend she finds herself pitted against a college educated ‘prettier and skinnier’ girl as she competes for the affections of a boy and sits waiting for the telephone to ring. Indeed, this theme pretty much covers the entire lyrical content, as Cosentino spends the entire record pining after one boy or another. You begin to feel that she has been parachuted in from a bygone, more innocent age.  

The charm carries through to the music, as most of Best Coast’s tunes hit the mark. They rattle through 13 songs in little over half an hour, mostly sounding like a more summery Mazzy Starr or a lo-fi Howling Bells. There’s precious little difficult listening here as Crazy For You passes over you like a summer breeze. ‘Boyfriend’, the title track and ‘Each and Everyday’ have hooks to spare, and the album’s mid-section is particularly strong, bolstered by the melancholic ‘Summer Mood’ and the swooning ’Spectorish Our Deal’.  

It’s an enjoyable debut then, but it is a little one dimensional to say the least, and brief as it is, the saminess does detract a little as the record wears on. And like any summer breeze, once it has passed it rather disappears into the ether. But nonetheless, it’s a fine introduction to a reassuringly old-fashioned talent. In a year dripping with brilliant female-fronted noisy pop (Sleigh Bells, Dum Dum Girls) Best Coast have made their mark. Snacks can expect to be spending even more time with his babysitter from now on.