Best In The West

"I know there are a lot of young girls that look up to me… and it's a really amazing thing, and I don't feel any pressure to not be the person that I am,” says Cosentino. However, she admits that it's difficult not to feel pressure when you're doing something so personal, and that she struggled with anxiety while making Best Coast's second album The Only Place. For her latest EP Fade Away, she felt more comfortable. “I know making the EP was definitely a very easy process for me where I didn't feel any sort of anxiety or anything, I was just in the studio making the songs.”

It's important for the singer-songwriter from California-based surf pop band Best Coast to stay true to herself. She focuses her songs on love and relationships, because it's the kind of subject matter that means the most to her. “I feel like I always write about what's going on in my life or at least things that have gone on in my life… I feel like it's what I know best; even though I'm completely confused about almost everything all the time,” she jokes. “I just feel inspired by real life and things that happen to people and things that are relatable to almost everybody.”

Cosentino started writing songs when she was 16 and was influenced by seminal pop punk artists like Green Day and Blink-182. She thinks her age played a factor in the kind of musician she is today: “Maybe it's the fact that I started writing music as a teenager and that's why my music still kind of sounds like a teenager has written it – because I'm basically just a teenager in a mid 20-something-year-old's body.”

The 20-something released the EP on her own label Jewel City and, while writing, was heavily influenced by the likes of Mazzy Star and My Bloody Valentine. “I kind of wanted to do something that was really poppy and kind of simple and catchy and straightforward. I took inspiration from both of those bands in the sense that I feel like there's a little bit more like distortion and some higher guitar parts.” Cosentino enjoyed the chance to really take the creative reins, without the influence of her former record label Mexican Summer. “I've always wanted to start a record label and have the freedom to do what I want to do when I want to.”

Best Coast are currently in the process of writing their third album and intend to tour the world once they've finished up in the studio. “I want to write a lot of songs to kind of pick and choose from, because on the last two records I wrote just a record. I wrote twelve songs and then we ended up using every song and so I feel like for this experience I've set a goal for myself to write about 25 songs so that we can sit in the studio and choose the best and have some options for ourselves.”