Best Coast - California Nights (Album Review)

Best Coast is the type of band that has gone through some evolution, while also not going through much evolution. Songwriting wise the band has been pretty consistent over the course of their career. They've released indie/pop infused with sometimes grunge elements, pop/punk elements, and surf rock/pop elements pretty much their entire career. The lyrics are very "diary" -esque. They love their home state of California a lot! Every album has a nod to California in multiple ways. Now I know you're saying the band evolved, but all you are seeing me talk about is similarities so I'll get to the evolution. It's all in the recording style. The original music released single songs, EPs, 7 inches, etc. featured an extremely low-fi fuzzy sounding recording style. The vocals were recorded in a way you could barely make out what front woman Bethany Cosentino was saying. They were distorted blown out sounding. The music sounded like a wall of fuzzy noise with maybe a beachy sounding lead riff throughout the song. This particular lo-fi trend swept the underground scene for about 10 minutes until similar artists like Wavves gained more attention and then they all released a much higher quality cleaner sounding album next time. The wall of noise was mostly gone and in most cases the artists let those pop/punk influences fly a little heavier. Best Coast music has evolved with cleaner and cleaner production. Crazy For You is an album I enjoyed quite a bit and it had almost the right balance of the production style. While the follow-up album, The Only Place, was almost too cleanly produced. Factor that aesthetic missing and that (to me at least) the songwriting had become stale in more than a few places I just kind of thought it might be over for my overall enjoyment of the band. They released an EP that didn't really catch my attention in a big way.

This album, California Nights, had me guessing it was going to be another touch of staleness, sameness, and so so songs. However, the singles released especially "Heaven Sent" had me more than interested. "Heaven Sent" is almost exactly what the song was when I heard it. The fire that I enjoyed from that early Best Coast material that hadn't been present, at least to me, for quite a while finally seemed to be there again. I played the song about four times in a row and I just got excited that maybe this band could capture my attention like they had on their earlier material and their debut album. Now after a few solid listens I am happy to say that as far as production goes on this album I think the band found a really good balance. The guitars have a much heavier, grungy sounding vibe. It's a nice middle ground between Crazy For You's production and The Only Place's production. To me this is a much stronger album musically than The Only Place. The batch of songs just sounds more powerful and better written.

"In My Eyes" is a catchy infectious tune that has some really ear pleasing guitar work. Bob Bruno really does some great work musically on this album. Lyrically it has a lot of similar vibes. They aren't terrible and in a lot of spots Cosentino has progressed a little as a lyrics writer over the course of Best Coast's career. There are a few lyrics that may be cringe worthy and at times they can get repetitive. "Sleep Won't Ever Come" Cosentino repeats the lyrics: "Sleep won't ever come to me" so many times it starts affecting my overall enjoyment of the song in a really bad way. Cosentino may address a new topic or two, but there are some very similar topics explored on this album that the band have explored in the past. I do enjoy her vocal performance on the album for the most part. It may be her best vocal work on a Best Coast album to date. Any lyrical pitfalls are definitely helped along by her vocal ability which I've always enjoyed.

I think Best Coast has bounced back after a series of less than stellar releases with California Nights. I think this is an album that will get a few more listens from me than some of the more recent material. I think it's their best crafted and best sounding album to date. I don't think it captures my excitement in the same way Crazy For You did, but at the same time it shows me the band is still capable of writing good music. I'm interested to see how well this album sticks with me as time goes on. Overall I'm enjoying this one more than I thought I would. I think this is a pretty solid album.