“Boyfriend”
from the album Crazy for You
2010
iTunes
Best Coast — aka the duo made up of Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno — hit the ’60s song pile hard when recording their forthcoming full-length debut (out July 27). “When I was getting ready to do drums for this record,” Bruno says, “I made a mix of different Beatles tracks and listened to it in my car nonstop for a week straight, mostly stuff from Beatles for Sale and everything before Rubber Soul.”
“There is an amazing song by the Jive Bombers,” adds Cosentino, the group’s principal lyricist, “and it’s called ‘Cherry’ and it’s the most beautiful song ever. I’m really inspired by happy, sunny-sounding ’50s and ’60s pop music and doo-wop.”
Google the emerging Eagle Rock, Calif., band and comparisons to the Beach Boys and act synonymous with Phil Spector’s trademark Wall of Sound are hard to miss.
“The earlier songs I was writing were simple, happy and cheery, but I think I got into a dark place for a second,” Cosentino, who started singing at age four, says of the debut. “There are probably only two or three songs that are going in a different direction but five or six three-minute sweetheart pop jams.”
Those happier jams usually end on one all-too-familiar topic for the L.A. native: boys. Take the catchy track “Boyfriend,” where Cosentino laments on the refrain, “I wish he was my boyfriend” like it were a missing page from Grease.
“I try to write songs that aren’t about boys, but I can’t do it.” she admits. “A lot of them aren’t even about real people. They’re about real situations either I’ve been in or I know that other people have been in.” Another example, pop gem “Our Deal” touches on more boy-tinged insecurities. “A lot of the songs are about me being like, ‘Why won’t you tell me you have a crush on me?’ or ‘Why can’t I tell you I have a crush on you?'” Cosentino says. “Just very simple, relatable shit.”
But Best Coast isn’t completely lost in the era that brought us Woodstock and the “Summer of Love.” “There’s one song that sounds like Nirvana a bit.” Cosentino says about one of the debut’s darker tunes. “It’s about me being bored and lazy and not really wanting to do anything. Bob plays drums on it and it gets kind of rockin’ at certain parts. There’s a part we were referring to as ‘the rock-out.'”