Coasting With Intent

"I can't wait to be in summer, because it's actually not summer in LA anymore so I'm looking forward to being back in it. We've never actually been to a beach in Australia. We've stayed by one but it was all stormy so we never ended up going, so hopefully we'll get to do that this time around.”

With only two sideshows announced thus far, your best chance to catch Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno aka Best Coast will be at either Falls or Southbound Festival, a balance Bethany is happy with. “I always enjoyed going to festivals. People obviously go to festivals to see specific bands but I think they also go just [for] the experience of the festival. I think a lot of times people stumble upon a stage where you're playing and they're like 'Oh I like this band' and maybe they buy your record.

“I think that's a cool aspect of it. We've played so many now. I think it's fun because for one you get tons of awesome music and a lot of times you get to see your friends that play in other bands.”

Hanging out with friends is one of the perks of being part of a band so encapsulating of a specific region and sound that you're essentially your own genre. While playing a show for friends and fashion photographer Poppy de Villeneuve's book launch in LA, they had a taste of the crazy that comes with being so renowned.

“We've never had anything happen like that at one of our shows before. It felt really punk. We had only played like five songs and Bobb leaned over and said something to me in between songs and I thought he was going to tell me something like we had to turn it down but he was like, 'The cops just shut the show down, this is our last song'. The kids were really bummed out but it was still a really fun event.”

Cosentino's glee at having a punk-rock moment is in contrast to, or perhaps because of, the band's deliberate move towards a shinier finish on their latest album and upcoming tracks, working with pop super producer Wall Gagel.

“We've recorded some songs for Record Store Day, which will come out next year and I'm really, really excited about them. I think they're two of my favourite songs that we've recorded in a really long time, so I'm definitely stoked on being back in the studio,” she enthuses.

“And I'm planning on doing an EP I think, I don't know when we'll start it or when it'll come out or anything, but I've been writing a lot because I've been spending so much time at home. So I have a lot of material that I'd really like to get down and get out there, so you'll definitely be hearing new stuff from us in the upcoming future.

“The recordings that we did for Record Store Day are kind of a little bit in between Crazy For You and The Only Place. They're not super produced, I mean they are very produced and clean sounding, but they have shades of what Crazy For You had. I think that's kind of what I want to do. I don't want to go back, and I don't want to totally change things, but I would kind of like to meet in the middle a little bit. I think that if we do an EP or if we record any songs before we do another record it will definitely have a glimmer of both Crazy For You and The Only Place in it.

“The songs that we just recorded we worked with a new producer, his name is Wally Gagel. He's recorded Miley Cyrus and he's recorded Muse and he's recorded Maroon 5 and like all these crazy pop bands, and then he's worked with a lot of more indie people. So that was kinda cool for us because we like pop music and so it was cool to work with somebody that's done a lot of straightforward pop stuff.”

Don't go calling Timbaland or Timberlake just yet, though. ”I'm not sure if we do an EP who we'll do it with at this point. I'm still writing stuff and trying to figure out what's the next step for us, but we like to work with different people just because it's fun to get to try new stuff.”

The contrast between 2010's Crazy For You and 2012's The Only Place provides more areas for fun and trying new stuff when pulling together a live show. “The second record is definitely a lot different than the first record and so it's cool to get to mix it up on stage. You get to play a combination of the fast pop songs that were on Crazy For You and then get to play a lot of the slower, more mellow songs we did on The Only Place.

“I think they work well together, the set doesn't seem weird and it doesn't feel like the songs don't go together. Live we make everything sound a little bit more blown out and fuzzy and a little bit more like punk, I guess.“

As they experienced at the LA book launch show, the joy of being on stage is the element of chaos or an unknown thing that could happen at any moment; something that is hard to sustain when recording second and third albums. Not to say things go downhill, there's just a naivety that can never be recaptured as you learn about effects and pedals and song construction. “I think now we do it more as a decorative thing,” Cosentino begins.

“We know where reverb and distortion belong as opposed to on the first record where we were like, 'Lets just put it on everything'. Now we know where it sounds good and where it doesn't. That's part of sort of growing up as a band and growing up as musicians, knowing what sounds good and what actually sounds like shit.”

The consciousness and deliberate nature of Bethany's approach to the Best Coast sound belies her cruisy surfer demeanour. The lady knows what she wants, and what she wants the fans to experience, which is why Australian audiences are unlikely to hear a sneaky peak of the material most recently recorded or still being written.

“We literally just recorded the new songs last week. When you have new music you kind of want to wait until it comes out so that people can hear what it's supposed to sound like,” she proffers.

“Whenever you play music people record it on their phone and it ends up on YouTube and it always sounds like shit because it's a terrible recording then people are like, 'Oh, I heard the new Best Coast song – it sucks'. and they don't get to hear it as you want them to hear it. So I don't know if we'll be playing any new stuff besides the last record, but you never know. Maybe we'll decide that we wanna play a bunch of weird new music and cover songs. I don't know, we'll see.”

Best Coast will be playing the following dates:

Wednesday 2 January - The Hi-Fi, Melbourne VIC
Thursday 3 January - The Metro, Sydney NSW
Friday 28 December - Tuesday 1 January - Falls Festival, Lorne VIC
Saturday 29 December - Tuesday 1 January - Falls Festival, Marion Bay TAS
Friday 4 January - Saturday 5 January - Southbound Festival, Busselton WA