// Best Coast //
// Crazy For You //Rating: 3 out of 5
On the strength of a string of singles released over the past half year or so, LA-based indie-pop trio Best Coast aims to make a splash with their debut album, Crazy For You. Unfortunately for us, the record quickly takes on a "heard one, heard em all" feel and fails to deliver the breezy, atmospheric surfer fest one might've expected. The overall sameness from one track to the next holds Crazy For You in first gear.
Lead vocalist Bethany Cosentino recently enjoyed some pre-release shine as she joined Kid CuDi and Rostam Batmanglij (of Vampire Weekend) for Converse's "Three Artists, One Song" campaign. By the end of the year, "All Summer" will likely rank as one of the top crossover hits of 2010. Though most of the cred goes to Cudi, the clarity of Cosentino's vocals on the chorus round out the song beautifully. By comparison, it's a bit of a letdown that whatever magic she brought to that promo didn't translate as well to this album.
A vast majority of the songs find Cosentino pining over something (love, lost love, a boy, etc). She's always got the same tone and delivery, and it begins to grate on the listener after a while. The backing guitars are pedestrian at best, leaving the onus on the lyrics and Cosentino's vocal chops to save the show. Unfortunately, they don't. Out of the 12 songs featured on the album, I would only be able to distinguish maybe 3 or 4 from the rest. There's nothing wrong with being repetitive (eg: the xx's debut last year), but there's a deal breaker when the "thing" being trotted out for each song (in this case, Cosentino's voice) overstays its welcome half-way through the album.
While some reviews have praised Best Coast for their surfy, everyman, lo-fi sound, I can't seem to get past how redundant it all is. Yes, I like how everything they do is veiled in this dreamy haze. Musically, is it anything worth raving over? No. Vocally, is Cosentino a game-changer? No. She sounds like any other chick who took the spot when someone asked to her sing in their band.
Summary: Like any semi-successful album, Crazy For You has a few highlights. Where it falters is when the listener realizes that all the unsuccessful tracks sound like half-baked attempts at what they meant to accomplish. The highlights, then, end up looking nothing more than the ones that got over the "meh" hump. The end result is that you only kinda care about the ones you like... and "kinda" isn't saying much, is it?
// Torrent DL //
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