Mixin' with Best Coast

Best Coast is the recording name of Bethany Cosentino, a Los Angeles songwriter who had been making lo-fi pop recordings and releasing them through online channels before the wider music press caught up with what she was doing in 2009.

The music has a surface of California sunshine: reverb-heavy guitar, melodies that sound like they were born on a beach, a production aesthetic that draws from the lo-fi tradition but without the studied ugliness of certain indie approaches. Underneath the surface is a specific kind of heartache that is more country than pop.

The country connection

The heartache in Best Coast's music is not complicated by irony. The songs are about longing, loss, and the gap between what you want and what you have in a mode that is direct rather than oblique. This is the emotional register of country music, transferred into a California pop context.

Cosentino has cited country music as an influence alongside the surf pop and indie lo-fi references. The combination is audible in the melody-first approach: the tunes are carried by the vocal rather than the production, which means the emotional content comes through regardless of the reverb levels.

The Mixin' With note

The Mixin' With format is an introduction to an artist whose work merits more attention than it is currently receiving. Best Coast in September 2009 was in that position.

The debut album Crazy for You would follow in 2010 and reach a broader audience. The lo-fi recordings that preceded it are where the rawness is.

Full Mixtapes index for more Mixin' With entries. For more on the California music context: Movie Lounge: Inside Pop the Rock Revolution.