"I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Fully Have My Shit Together"

23 April 2015 | 7:00 pm | Kane Sutton

Some things never change.

More Best Coast More Best Coast

It's been five years since Bethany Cosentino and Best Coast won hearts over with their scuzzy, lo-fi summery indie-rock, and it came at a time when Cosentino was still trying to discover who she was. Best Coast enjoyed huge success thanks to that record, but Cosentino says it all just fell into place, unlike their latest album – their third full-length – titled California Nights; there was definitely a stronger sense of vision this time around. “When we made Crazy For You it was an album based upon a reaction to some singles we put out, so it was just like, ‘Ok, we’re gonna go in the studio and make a record.’ So, it’s not that it wasn’t a thought-out process, but it just kind of happened.” Cosentino explains. “I think now, five years later, we’re in a place where when we were making [California Nights] we had a clear vision of what we wanted to do. We weren’t afraid to take risks and we didn’t really think like, ‘Ok, we can’t really explore certain influences because that’s not what people expect from Best Coast,’ it was more like, we’re gonna do whatever we want and we’re gonna make a record we’re happy with. A lot of that has to do with growing up and gaining confidence as people and as artists.”

Cosentino took on a much larger role on California Nights. As well as being the chief songwriter, she also played a bit part in most of the other areas of creative output, namely the video clips they’ve recently released for singles California Nights and Heaven Sent. It’s a first for her, and that makes this album all the more special. “In the past our team would come to us with four or five options for a video and say, which do you like best? But thus far, like with the Heaven Sent music video, I totally wrote the treatment for that, and I worked with a friend of mine and we co-directed it together, and that was really exciting for me, and again I think that I wasn’t really doing that stuff in the beginning because I was a little unsure and I think now that I have this newfound sense of confidence and knowing what I want things to look like and what I want things to come across as.”

Most importantly though, Cosentino has found the time to compose herself over the years since Crazy For You – an impressive feat considering how quickly the band rose to fame. “I’m 28 now, and when I started Best Coast I was 23, so I was a very unsure 23 year-old who started a band and then all of a sudden the band was popular and I was just like, ‘What?’ I never really had time to process it. [I’ve been] focusing the last few years on ... getting some time to spend to myself and re-evaluating what was important to me. Obviously I don’t have my shit together, I don’t think I’ll ever fully have my shit together, but I definitely have it more together now than I did at 23 when I made Crazy For You.”

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