Interview with Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast
Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast has been one of the most influential people in my life’s trajectory. My discovery of Cosentino’s heart-on-sleeve, unabashed acknowledgement that sitting in your room with a broken heart is a totally OK thing to be, was an important piece in my life. It still speaks to me today when I just cannot be fucked with the world.
The chance to speak to her was nerve-racking but real and I am all the more appreciative for her and the impact she has had on the postive perception of female musicians and female audiences.
Originally posted on artfelicis.com
Best Coast are a band that have been on a life trajectory with me and thousands of others. My story with them started during a short stint in San Diego in 2011, when a local friend I had just made handed me a mix CD with “Our Deal” on it. I was hooked immediately. Since then, Best Coast has been my go-to band on rainy nights when I need to feel understood, lying in my bed eating Nutella from a jar.
Hailing from California, Best Coast (and their front woman Bethany Cosentino) arrived when the only Californian girl out was Katy Perry. At this time “Teenage Dream” seemed to be equated to the way females imagined their emotions- through the gaze of male expectations (‘You think I’m pretty without any make-up on).
So thank the heavens for Cosentino’s arrival. She was like a breath of fresh air to girls around the globe. We just wanted
- a girl on a guitar
- that wrote her own music
- with no added bullshit and contrived sex appeal on top
Singing about feeling sad, lonely, anxious, broken-hearted, isolated and smoking weed to help aid this, Cosentino was representing the reality of females that was essentially hidden, but quite obviously and largely existed.
Since the release of their 7” Something In The Way, Best Coast has resonated with music listeners for the raw simplicity of their lyrics (‘And although I’m always walking you never notice me/You don’t even think I feel a thing’) and their lo-fi approach to these songs. This has made audiences feel like they are right there in Bethany’s bedroom, listening to her lament her heartaches.
Fast-forward to 2015 and Best Coast happen to be one of the most popular indie bands in the world. Their debut album Crazy For You solidified their presence on the world festival touring circuit and Cosentino’s effortless tomboy-fem fashion sense became an Urban Outfitters styling dream.
Talking to us from her Los Angeles home (which looks like this by the way…livin’ dat dream) and gearing up for the release of their third album, California Nights (out on May 5thvia Harvest Records), Bethany took some time out to chat with us about the making of California Nights and what it’s like to be in Best Coast.
Having showcased some of their new tracks across a busy stint at SXSW, her elation about the new record is apparent when she remarked, ‘…it reminded me that people are very excited to hear this record and that people care about our band and about our music. And that’s what’s most important.’
//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.jsBill Murray watching Best Coast at this year’s SXSW.
Upon listening to California Nights, it is apparent that whilst the structures of Best Coast’s themes and compositions have not changed, the sound and vibe has most definitely matured. There are more booming and spaced out guitar elements added alongside phased rolling drum beats as we hear the unfolding of the lo-fi days that are trickling away.
A soundscape is created and if you’ve ever been in California at night amongst the streaming neon street lights, amongst the canyons and in essentially what is a city in a desert, California Nights reminds you of that- balmy, opportunistic and incredibly centred to the Earth.
Over the last five years, the making of Best Coast has been a creative process that has tirelessly culminated into California Nights. To create the album, a different approach was taken in the way that it was written and recorded. This change in sound concept is something that Bethany is ‘really excited to talk about’.
‘With this record I was able to spend more time on my ideas because I was at home. I wasn’t leaving to go on tour in the middle of making it so I would do some writing at home. I would go into the studio and record and then be able to come home at night and hang out with my friends and then go back to the studio the next day. So the process felt just more like the record just evolved organically into what it is now.’
With Crazy For You being a record that literally catapulted Best Coast onto the world stage, the band had also carved out their own sound and placed themselves as a workable medium in the growing Californian lo-fi and chillwave music scene.
As a result, Bethany describes The Only Place as a somewhat rushed and forced effort as she continues to explain her comfortability and happiness with California Nights and where Best Coast are now.
‘With the second record there was a lot of pressure to follow up the first one. I had literally just come off the road for like, a whole two years and then had to write a whole record and then go straight into the studio.
With this one, we were able to take a lot of time off and spend a lot of time at home. I think that, by spending a lot of time at home, I could exercise, I could go do things with my friends, I could hang out in my living room, I could cook dinner for myself, I could sleep in my own bed and so, it kind of bought me to like, remember who I am.
I think that with this record it was very important for me to just take a step back. It allowed me to write a record that I was really comfortable with and that I was very confident about.
I think that, you know, with every record I grow between each one. I grow, I become older and I matured a little bit more, or sometimes I’ve not matured and I’ve gone backwards.’
Source: Interview Magazine
California Nights is most certainly not a step-backward for Best Coast. Bethany’s partnership with Bobb Bruno (Best Coast’s guitarist) appears to have grown. Guitar riffs on California Nights are more intricate, melodic and at the forefront of the structure of the songs whereas before, straight-up guitar chords dominated. This is a result of their being ‘confident’ in their work with one another and their agreeance to ‘step out of our territory and explore other ideas’.
‘With the song “California Nights”, I was mostly inspired by Led Zeppelin and being spiritualised. I wanted to have a song that was kind of psychedelic, so that’s why it’s spacey and big sounding. Whereas before, I definitely thought that “Oh I should write for this certain genre because that’s what people expect from Best Coast”.
But when we made this record, we didn’t really care. We were just like, “We will do whatever we want and whatever inspiration comes to us we will just go with it”’.
Although Bethany is aware that Best Coast is ‘tagged as this 60s inspired, surf-pop band’, California Nights clearly possesses a more noise-band feel, with overlays of instrumental elements adding to the natural drawn out echo of Cosentino’s voice and lyrics (‘California nights make me so happy I could die/ But I try to stay alive’).
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Bethany advises that the band took influence from ‘Dinosaur Jnr. or Hole or just whoever and whatever was blaring at us. We were just like, “let’s just go there and not limit ourselves”’.
This approach to writing also saw a sneak in of some Gwen-Stefani post-No Doubt pop flares shining through on Bruno’s guitar playing; ‘There are guitar parts in one of the songs that Bob said was a little bit inspired by a Gwen Stefani solo song. So in the beginning we may have been like, “Oh no we can’t sound like her, we can’t be influenced by Gwen Stefani” because that’s not what we were tagged as.’
Could this have been an epiphany for the new and unlimited sound of Best Coast?
‘When we made this record we realised we should use the songs where we have been inspired by whoever and whatever we wanted. And yeah, we were really careful but that was just because we had taken such a long time to get to feel comfortable.’
In 2013 Best Coast released Fade Away, an EP released on Cosentino’s own record label Jewel City. Merely a year earlier, The Only Place was released with the minimalistic Shangri-La-esque girl group tones that audiences expected from Cosentino. Positioned against this, Fade Away appeared to be a huge and deliberate intermediate step in a different direction from Best Coast. It provided a heavier sound and a pre-cursor to California Nights.
By releasing the EP on Jewel City, it could be easy to assume that this was because Best Coast wanted a change and that this was the only way to do that without the bureaucracy of record labels and the music industry’s failure to recognise artists as just that, and not as factories churning out music as a commodity.
Bethany is however quick to point out that California Nights was worked on under a major label (Harvest Records, an offshoot of Capitol and EMI) and she reflects on this experience in an incredibly positive manner.
‘I actually think that the process of working with a major label has sort of empowered us in a way where I always felt like it would be a little bit harder doing things through a major label. In a way, working with a major label has given us more leverage whereas sometimes it could be like we would be doing whatever somebody had told somebody else to tell us what to do.
The ideas are a lot more directed by us, which is something that I didn’t necessarily expect, but I think that it’s also the progression of who we are as people now. We just feel a lot more comfortable and confident in making big decisions. We know who we are more now than we did back then.’
Who Best Coast are and, in particular, Bethany Cosentino, has seemingly become part and parcel of their appeal to fans, bloggers and trend-spotters the world over.
Bethany’s authenticity as the quintessential, alternative Californian girl stems from her vintage and effortless style, her unabashed mentioning of getting high in many of her songs (“California Nights”, “Sun Was High (So Was I)”, “Our Deal”, “Crazy For You” etc.) and in the very relaxed and intuitive way that she speaks and presents herself on stage.
Added to this is Bethany’s prolific activity on her Twitter (137K followers), Facebook (292K followers) and Instagram (17K followers) pages.
Within these platforms, artists are now able to represent themselves freely without the need for industry crafted media statements every time they have a thought. A new level of connectivity that was could once only be achieved through personalised fan letters is now accessible to fans, anywhere and at anytime.
Bethany admits that whilst these social media accounts are ‘constant’ and ‘overwhelming’, she maintains, ‘I always like to have something for my fans to see what we’re doing, or see where we’re travelling. But I always like to have something about that that is from me… I don’t ever want things to go out that aren’t, my voice or have anyone be like “That doesn’t sound like Bethany”. I want it to be like, what I’m saying is a part of my personality.’
Considering that much of Best Coast’s lyrics deal with what Bethany describes as, ‘inspired by my insecurities and anxieties and the issues that I’ve dealt with’, it is not surprising when she admits that her online confidence on social media is quite different to how she operates in real life.
She states, ‘I think that in person I am actually socially awkward and when I talk to my fans on the internet, my personality and the way that I speak is more me. Sometimes when I meet fans they’re like, “Oh you seem so different to what you’re like on the internet” and I’m like, “Well that’s because I’m like a little nervous.”’
Despite juggling the personalisation of herself online and offline, Bethany is humble in maintaining that ‘I definitely have always just kind of wanted to interact with our fans and do whatever it takes to do that without ever having to have them see me face-to-face, sweating straight from stage and awkward.’
Bethany’s adoration for her fans is something that is extremely evident when speaking to her in that, everything she speaks about comes back to trying to provide for her fans. She constantly expresses their being grateful of the fans extensive support saying, ‘I think it’s important because we wouldn’t be who we are or doing what we’re doing without our fans’.
This is also evident in the packaging of Best Coast’s vinyls. All physical copies of California Nights come with a key ring and exclusive access to their concert tickets. Fans can up this deal by purchasing deluxe editions that come with a t-shirt and autographed lithograph.
Whilst they are of the belief that ‘as long as they’re listening to it, (their music) then that’s what’s important’, Best Coast still want their fans ‘to experience the record the way that we would love them to.
When you make a record you put so much time into the artwork and the packaging and the liner notes and you want that to be taken seriously. We definitely think “OK, what would our fans want” and what would be their first step to actually purchase a physical copy of the record, by either going online and listening to it or on vinyl in a record store’.
And if you’ve ever been to a Best Coast live show, you’ll know what it’s like. Devoted fans sway mesmerised as Cosentino sings and lends to us the universal nod of, “you are not alone in this”. When I asked her this makes her feel, Bethany expressed a sense of gratitude that suggested that her fans have given her more than she has given us;
‘It feels really, really, really amazing. I definitely play shows and I look out into the crowd and sometimes hear the audience singing louder than I can hear myself sometimes and that is really, really an incredible feeling.
To know that all these other people are listening to these songs, and they are relating to them, and they are taking the time out of their day to buy tickets to my concerts, and then go to the concert and stand there and sing along to all of the songs. It’s a really incredible feeling and it makes me feel really happy.
And it’s really one of those things in life where if I’m feeling low or tired, or if I’m doubting myself, those are the times that I remind myself of. There’s nothing better than looking out and seeing someone sing back to you a song that you wrote when you were sad and lonely in your room. It’s definitely a very satisfying feeling.’
Source: Flickr
There is something very humbling and reassuring about the way that Best Coast’s approach to music has had on my understanding of their trajectory toward California Nights.
As a huge fan of Crazy For You, listening to California Nights for the first time threw me off a bit and that is only because of its remarkable difference in sound, production and musical intricacy. This difference arrives only because of their growth and their crafting in making Best Coast the best version of Best Coast that it can be (alliteration…holla). And if that’s why a change happens, then I commend that.
Music is an art form and no growing artist can remain the same.
Best Coast version 1.0 is still in there. You can hear it especially in the sweetheart grunge-rock track “Heaven Sent”. With catchy chorus lines and a perfect depiction of the Golden State, California Nights is an absolute ripper of a record and a proud moment for Best Coast and their fans alike.
Originally published at bangersland.wordpress.com on October 4, 2015.
