Review
Best Coast
Crazy For You

Right off the bat you can’t help but feel Best Coast’s full-length debut, Crazy for You, is going to be an album you listen to every summer to come. This indie-pop group has a sound that goes hand-in-hand with enjoying the sun while lying on the beach.

However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. On the surface, Crazy For You is reminiscent of 50s surf- pop. Most of the album dedicates its time to making us dance. Listening to the track “Happy,” it’s easy to lose yourself in the catchy dance beat. That is, until you stop to listen to Bethany Cosentino’s lyrics. You go back to listen again, and do a double take as you notice the first line is,

“Yeah, there's blood on the wall, but I'm happy.”

Sometimes it can come off clingy and grim. That’s kind of what appeals the most to me, though. Cosentino delivers simplistic lyrics with a droned out vocal performance that almost makes Crazy For You sound like it should be the soundtrack to “Play Misty For Me” or Carpenter’s “Christine.” Most of the tracks deal with being lovelorn and lonely. After awhile, it can turn this fun toe-tapper into an album that feels like it’s draining you of all your energy. Hearing,

“You will never fall in love”

over and over in the record’s closing track, “Each and Every Day,” can get depressing. On top of the simplistic lyrics feeling a little repetitive, the same could be said about the music. It’s easy to lose track of how long you’ve been listening to Crazy For You. The whole album is kept pretty mid-tempo and the tracks tend to bleed together. Before you know it, you’re at the climax of the seventh track, “I Want To,” where the song picks up the pace and signifies you’re right past the half-point of the album. It would have helped to have not saved the two most upbeat songs for the end.

Best Coast’s Crazy For You is a gloomy record hidden behind classic poppy melodies, and can be listened to two ways. One way, is you can put it on as background music, and tap your foot or bob your head. The other way, is you can ball yourself up into the fetal position and find solace in the lyrics because you just went through a dreadful breakup. Either way, these 12 tracks plus one bonus track shouldn’t be ignored.