Best Coast: Crazy for You (2010)

 

Hablar de Crazy for You no es sólo hablar de un disco de verano, como hemos leído en numerosos lugares. Crazy for You (2010) es, al menos para quien escribe, uno de los mejores discos del año en el panorama estrictamente Pop. Un disco imperecedero que se basa en unas influencias clásicas para erigirse como un disco intemporal, preñado de melodías deliciosas y de la espontaneidad de unas composiciones absolutamente arrebatadoras. Sus huellas sonoras son clásicas, como dijimos: Beach Boys y cualquier manifestación del sonido Surf; las Girl-Groups de los años sesenta y el Wall of Sound. Todo ello aderezado por unos toquecitos amargos del mejor Noise-Pop. Bethany Cosentino se erige con este álbum de debut en una especie de Kim Deal californiana influenciada por un buen puñado de discos de corte clásico. Un lujazo. El disco no tiene desperdicio en ninguno de sus trece temas. Boyfriend, When I´m with you ya eran conocidos: himnos post-adolescentes del mejor Noise-Pop. El resto no desentona: The End, Crazy for you, Goodbye, Summer Mood, Our deal, I Want to, When the sun don´t shine, Bratty B, Happy, Each and every day… son todos temazos que nos descubren a una chica que lo mismo muestra la energía rockista y positivista de Bratty B a la dulzura juvenil de Our Deal. Añadiré que buena parte de culpa del sonido del disco la tiene igualmente la otra mitad de Best Coast, Bobb Bruno, conocido músico y productor que ha colaborado decisivamente en que el sonido del disco sea algo así como una maqueta bien producida, con los arreglos justos y con algunos instrumentos que habrán sido grabados prácticamente del tirón o en muy pocas tomas. Un disco maravilloso, en fin, que pasa a formar parte del rincón de favoritos de The JangleBox. Un álbum que sobrepasa sobradamente las etiquetas de disco veraniego y que junto con el de su amigo Nathan Williams, factotum de Wavves y otro espíritu juvenil inquieto como el de Cosentino, nos muestran un panorama musical californiano absolutamente envidiable.

Best Coast – Crazy for You (2010)

«There’s a great scene in Twilight: New Moon where Bella sits by her window waiting for her drippy goth-vampire boyfriend Edward. She sits in her chair and waits. Months go by, and the camera slowly pans around her, not moving. Elsewhere in the movie she awakes screaming, so tortured is she to be apart from her beloved. It didn’t take me long to picture Crazy For You – the debut album by west-coaster Bethany Cosentino, formerly of Pocahaunted, now of Best Coast – as a kind of alternative, reverb-drenched soundtrack to the perpetually chaste Twilight series. The sheer quantity of longing on this album positively soaks the speakers, almost every track a paean to forbidden and lost love.
“I wish he was my boyfriend” Cosentino sings on ‘Boyfriend’; this sets the tone – later we hear how “I can’t do anything without you”, “I want you so much”, “I always miss you”. That’s not to say that there isn’t much to commend Crazy For You. The tracks are all snappy slices of girl-group garage pop, admirably well constructed (only one breaks the dreaded three minute mark) and with plenty of sunny doo-wop delay vocals. Yet if there’s to be life beyond one record, Best Coast will have to find something more substantial to go with their well-worked three-chord formula.
Indeed, Cosentino’s perpetually lovelorn persona is so one-dimensionally persistent it makes Bella look like Anna Karenina. As refreshing as it is to hear an indie-rock record fronted by a strong female voice, it’s equally frustrating to find that voice with little to say: the album’s strongest track, ‘When The Sun Don’t Shine’, adds the kind of fuzz and lilting riff needed to lift the music away from the vocals. Of course there’s still time for Cosentino to develop as a songwriter, as well as to remember that Fifties and Sixties girl-pop often had more to say than just ‘I need a boyfriend’ (whether addressing impotence or domestic abuse), often toying with a darker side (as any fan of Mulholland Drive can testify) that Cosentino chooses to gloss over. To paraphrase the title of one of her tracks she’s more “brat” than lovable mope. Her Best Coast is enjoyably light and breezy, but whether you want to share the vista with a brat is another matter» (drownedinsound.com)

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