BEST COAST

Best Coast is a pleasant LA ladyband whom everybody and their grandmother's blogs have been mellowly losing their shit over lately. Our own grandmothers included.

Their music deals with timeless issues like weed and the beach, both of which their soothing melodies compliment nicely. They're also playing tonight at the Mercury Lounge once the sun dips under the horizon and the temperature leaves the quadruple digits. I had a wee chat with lead Best Coaster Bethany about her band.

Vice: Your last band, Pocahaunted, had a much more experimental sound than Best Coast, which is more lo-fi pop. It kind of sounds like you convinced the Ronettes to run away from Phil Spector and get high down at the beach. Did this happen organically, or was it something you set out to do as you wrote your new tracks?
Bethany: Actually, I had never listened to the kind of music I played when I was in Pocahaunted. It was never a conscious decision to make it sound that way, I wasn't recording Pocahaunted tracks and then going home and listening to weird drone music, I was still listening to pop music. I'm not trying to get away completely from that type of music with Best Coast, but the sound is just more what I know about in terms of songwriting.

After you left Pocahuanted you moved to the east coast to attend The New School, but quickly returned to California because you hated New York. We take that personally around here.
I don't hate New York, I just didn't really like my experience there. I think a lot of it had to do with the winter. I was born and raised in California and I have no idea or understanding of a winter. At first I really liked it, it was so beautiful, and I'd walk around with my friends in the snow. But then a week into it I was like, this is bullshit, when is this over?

I also felt like it was really hard to relax in New York. I went straight from school to home, and I lived in a shithole apartment I paid way too much for. My window looked out to an alley and there was no sun. We've been back to New York recently though, like when we played CMJ, and its always fun to visit. Living there was just difficult for me.

Yeah, no one's gonna blame you for hating the winter here. Once you moved back to California you began recording some new tracks. How did Best Coast grow from a few songs recorded at your mom's house to what it is today?
I think the internet has everything to do with it. There are so many different outlets online now. You can be in a band or start a blog and put it online and millions of people look at it. Sometimes I wonder how the fuck this happened, but I'm stoked because there's nothing else I'd rather be doing.

Have you seen those fan videos that set your music to some French new wave movie clips?
Yeah, those videos are really cool. It's rad that someone took the time to edit a video of my song. I think the clips they chose are really good too.

Do you have plans for an official video anytime soon?
We're planning on doing an official video pretty soon. We just finished working on our record and doing our first real tour, so we've been focusing on other stuff, but a video is coming soon.

Is the new album completely finished?
Yeah, it is. We just heard some of the early versions of rough mixes. Bobb and I are really excited about it.

You can check out more Best Coast on their Myspace page or blog.

BRITTANY G