Best Coast – Sun Was High (So Was I)

Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino needs weed. Badly. She has been pleading between songs at every show, putting the call out on Twitter for someone – anyone – to hook her up. Presenting her with some at an interview only seems logical.

“Put the shit down over there,” she barks.
Okay.
“Bong.”
What?
“Where’s the fucking bong? Don’t tell me you rolled up here without any paraphernalia.”

Only none of this happens. For once, The Stool Pigeon’s connection is having an off day. Bethany Cosentino – garage pop superhero, eccentric cat lady, hopeless pot-head – looks gutted. “Thanks for trying,” she says, after a hug. “It’s the thought that counts.”

She has been to the doctor with anxiety, headaches and insomnia – real issues, she insists, that have warranted her one saving grace: a Californian medicinal marijuana card. “I’m way too much of a stress case if I don’t smoke enough weed. Ask them!” she says, gesturing at bandmates Bobb Bruno (guitar) and Ali Koehler (drums). “When I smoke, I’m 100 per cent a different person. I’m easier to be around, I make funnier jokes. I think everything is funny therefore I’m entertaining. When Bobb doesn’t get his whiskey, he’s a fuckin’ cry baby. But that’s easier to get. So I complain a lot and it’s annoying to have to ask people so much. They think I’m being a child. [in kiddy voice]  ‘I need weed!’ They’re like: ‘no, you don’t.’”

Given that she credits “the void of a brain” for her infectious hooks, there may be a link between the dope and the dumb genius of the 23-year-old’s songs. If you thought all the catchiest melodies had been done, Cosentino makes revitalising the two-chord pop tune look easy. Free of the clinical artifices that steer manufactured pop, her songs express sentiments too blunt to be considered pretentious or hokey.

“When girls write songs about boys or love, they try to mask it in metaphor and a bunch of weird shit whereas I’m just straight up telling you: ‘you’re bothering me, you’re hurting my feelings’,” she says. “I’m a straightforward person and I write straightforward songs. Some of them are about nothing. I used to lie by saying they weren’t about anybody but I’m over that now.  I’m admitting that most of the songs are about one person and he knows they’re about him so he doesn’t really care. It’s embarrassing.”

So far that muse has inspired two EPs, a string of singles and the forthcoming album, Crazy For You. But despite the resulting fervour, Cosentino can’t promise there’ll be more . “Honestly I could say, ‘pack it up, we’re leaving’ at any point,” she says, sipping from a pint of cider in the darkened alcove of a London pub, a duffel coat smothering her petite floral dress. “It would suck for a lot of people but no one’s going to tell me I can’t. I just want to live in the moment… or some cheesy hippy shit. If it isn’t fun anymore, you don’t do it.”

It wouldn’t be the first time. As a show baby, Cosentino was placed in talent shows and TV commercials by her parents, warping her upbringing. “I was weird. I was a problem child… a pretty fucked up kid in high school, but I got over it.”  By 16, major labels began expressing interest in the sappy love songs she was recording as Bethany Sharayah. When her parents urged caution, Cosentino formed Pocahaunted with Amanda Brown instead, becoming the self-proclaimed “Olsen twins of blIssed-out drone”. Yet what began as a bedroom noise project attracted an unexpected following and she bailed once again. “It just was not enjoyable anymore. I moved away, I changed. I never listened to the kind of music I played in Pocahaunted. It was just something to do and became more than I thought it ever would. I’ve never really followed through with anything I didn’t feel passionate about.”

Cosentino gave up music and became a recluse while studying in New York, watching Seinfeld marathons in bed and getting stoned to combat chronic homesickness. It was listening to the Beach Boys while moping through the snow that inspired her to move back to California and, with the help of Bruno, she began recording fuzzy ditties about sunshine and boys. Though homesick again and further from home than she’s ever been, today the lack of drugs at least allows for a lucid reflection on the ups and downs, every moment of self-doubt along the way seemingly alleviated by frivolous misadventure.

“I did ’shrooms on our last tour and I saw a ghost in our hotel room. It was there, bitch! I’m tellin’ you,” she says, animatedly. “But ’shrooms’ll do that to ya. My mom is a middle-aged hippy who claims she can speak to ghosts. She’d look at a wall and say, ‘leave the room, there’s a ghost in here’. Totally freaked me out… If you smoke as much as weed as I do, that’s fuckin’ scary. Then when we were recording our album, our producer played these EVPs [Electronic voice phenomena] from, like, the 1700s… Oh wait, there were no recordings in the 1700s. Well, like 1970 – and there was a ghost on it. I had to leave the room, covering my ears.”

With her bandmates in hysterics, teasing Cosentino as they debunk her anecdotes, it’s hard to believe she’s really that eager to get home. “Well if I wasn’t doing this I’d be sitting on my ass in my house doing nothing. I love that but you can only do it for a certain amount of time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to keep doing this,” she says with a giggle, “at least until I smoke so much weed that I forget how to speak a language.”

Originally published in The Stool Pigeon, June 2010.

Young Man – Just A Growin’

Young Man – Heart of Chambes (Beach House cover)

Young Man is 20-year-old Colin Caulfield, he of YouTube cover versions fame, previously praised by Bradford Cox for his take on Rainwater Cassette Exchange and featured here for his version of Grizzly Bear’s ‘While You Wait For The Others’. Well, since then Caulfield has been working on an EP entitled Boy in his Chicago bedroom and even has a gig lined up at one of my favourite venues, La Fleche D’Or in Paris, in two weeks. Hopefully more good stuff is still to come…

MySpace

Photo by <sïanaïs>, licensed under Creative Commons

Perfume Genius – Learning

Every time Chris Garneau attempts a lo-fi recording at home, a chill lends itself to the air and a faint lullaby-like sound can be heard interfering with the tape-deck. The more he strains to hear it, the more he’s convinced he’s captured an electronic voice phenomenon. What he doesn’t know is that his ghost has a name: Perfume Genius.

MySpace

Photo by kimama, licensed under Creative Commons

Jeans Wilder – Sea You

It’s a hazy summer evening; your friend takes a photo of you in a car park as the sun starts to dip behind buildings. As you drive home, this song creeps on the radio through some local frequency before slipping out into static. But the photo will trigger that melody in your head, every time, and that day will be remembered as one of the best.

Jeans Wilder is worth investigating purely for his mystical link to Best Coast; they split a limited edition 7″ together, which was released yesterday on Atelier Ciseaux.

MySpace

Photo byAmanda DeRosa, licensed under Creative Commons

Suckers – Easy Chairs

A rousing burst of pop to get the week off to a good start. Pretty hard not to sing along with this one; even harder not to imagine 2010 being a good year for this band. The Brooklyn group recently recorded a full-length record for Gigantic, but in the meantime you can buy this limited edition 7″ (or this one) and check out the Daytrotter session.

MySpace

Photo by audelising, licensed under Creative Commons

Natureboy – Heart to Fool

Natureboy is a lovely secret. And with sounds like this, a lot of people in New York may want to keep it that way.  Natureboy is mainly Sara Kermanshahi (who looks eerily like someone I used to know, but not really, who moved to Brooklyn years ago) with the occasional help of Cedar Apffel and Rory O’Connor from Masterface. Sharon Van Etten is a fan – and what better endorsement is there than that? Check out the self-titled album on iTunes, download a free concert here, or watch a live take of this track on a NYC rooftop below.

MySpace

Photo by ∞∞∞, licensed under Creative Commons

Golden Ages – Everything Will Be Alright

A perfect tune for a Friday night: upbeat, uplifting, with just the right mixture of electronics and melody. Golden Ages are from Philadelphia, they’re friends with Candy Claws, and their new album Tradition, which is released through Deerhaus, is worth checking out.

myspace

Photo by audelising, licensed under Creative Commons

Spirit Spine – Flashes

Panda Bear may not be the only one to make a splash with one-man harmonies in 2010. Spirit Spine (Indiana’s Joseph Denny) has been steadily gleaming praise from music blogs for the past year, but later this month his new album Jungle Bridges drops, taking that infectious force even further. For the time being you can still download his Surfhunter EP for free (along with the a cappella and instrumental tracks to remix for yourself), while his self-titled debut can be found on iTunes.

MySpace

Photo by bia.hvid, licensed under Creative Commons

Lonely Galaxy – Have a Heart

I keep coming back to this track and I can’t quite figure out why. Maybe it’s because it sounds better when jangling around in your head unexpectedly; maybe it’s that faint sense of familiarity, or how it reminds me of Real Estate; maybe it’s the chord shift when the song kicks up a gear mid-way through its seven minutes; or maybe it’s just an effectively unconventional pop song from London.

MySpace

Photo by Cobeete, licensed under Creative Commons

Feral Children – Inside the Night

Feral Children are getting 2010 off to a good start. Their second album, Brand New Blood, is warm and well-produced (thank you, Scott Colburn); their harmonies can pull you in without trying too hard (not an easy thing to do these days); the subject matter is  often alluringly  dark, while the songs themselves shift subtly, growing and flickering in a way that rewards patience.

The album’s best tracks can be heard over at their MySpace.

Brand New Blood is released next week on Sarathan Records.

Pre-order

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Photo by pseudothoughts, licensed under Creative Commons