Best Coast

More than any other creative discipline, music listeners are drawn to "the new"

I'm glad that there are enough listeners who feel this way to support (at least a modicum of) new musicians. I listen to a lot of music that is new to me but I'm mostly drawn to "did I read something intriguing about this act in a dusty library book thirty-five years ago".

I saw Best Coast live 8 years ago and don't remember anything, they certainly didn't go for drama.

Yeah, my observations are in no way a value-judgement. And these observations (mostly) apply to genres of music that exist firmly within the mechanics of "the culture industry"-- pop, rap, r&b, rock, indie, commercial punk. (Jazz, experimental and chamber music composers, it doesn't apply so much). In myself I have observed a distinct lack-of-interest toward pretty much all "culture industry" acts, after their zeitgeist-grab; the number of such artists I would blindly pre-order their fifth or tenth album is limited to... ten, maybe? Erykah Badu is the only one I could name off the top of my head. Any artist who can sustain my attention, have me genuinely excited for every-new-thing-they-put-out, to me it feels like they've hacked my programming.

Insofar as examples like NOFX, these are legacy acts; my experience with legacy artists is that the method of consumption changes, people engage with them in pursuit of a nostalgic experience; or, if you're too young to have been there the first time, a proxy-nostalgia experience. I think of myself watching Fleetwood Mac, or Zombies, or Bryan Ferry, too young to have seen them in their prime but getting a taste of what it might've been like.

As far as Best Coast is concerned, I think it's a testament that the band has any staying power at-all that this article exists, and generated attention. I won't name the twenty-other of Best Coast's contemporaries that have faded more-quickly into obscurity so as to barely exist at all in 2023

haven't heard this new one or the last best coast album, still love Cali Nights. she's been thru the wringer a bit to some extent, def think she caught vv targeted flak from some corners that was perhaps a bit misogynist in retrospect (more than a bit perhaps) and i don't doubt it affected her moving forward. she seems vv resilient however, she's managed to stick around for a long time.

Maybe call it The Cosentinos.

If she were to start a band called The Beffanies I'd buy a ticket

maybe just the Beffs for short

Best Coast had some pleasant tunes but they're a near-perfect example of a band that got fleeting interest before that era of scenester moved on to the next thing. They weren't Spoon or The National or The New Pornographers. Many of them had far less longevity and fan loyalty than the pop artists that indie used to be an alternative to. If there's any nostalgia for that time period I don't think it's come around yet.

― Chris L, Thursday, 14 December 2023 19:17 (one hour ago) link

otm, straight-ahead indie rock that broke around 2010 is almost entirely consigned to the dustbin of history for whatever reason. doesn't necessarily invalidate anything she said but there is very little interest in that era

My only thought on the Best Coast thing is that it’s part of a bigger story about musicians, writers and other industry folks who experienced the Peak Indie era adjusting to a new reality. If you were there and are still trying to do your thing, you can probably empathize.

— Ian Cohen (@en_cohen) December 12, 2023

My interest in Best Coast declined in concert with the amount of background noise in their recordings. Just not a very interesting band without the cassette deck Phil Spector thing happening.

I don’t think any of the recent indie gone pop moves have been good, though.

I liked California Nights, which felt like an interesting move toward a more polished alt-rock sound, but I recall finding Always Tomorrow kind of dull.

I really liked Best Coast when they first came out, but something happened to her singing voice, maybe she got lessons or something, after the first few singles she started enunciating in a really annoying way where every vowel she would sing ooh-wah. I think I gave up them about 10 years ago tbh - yeah just checked I basically only like their first album. California Nights was better than the album before which I thought was dreadful and I haven't listened to anything since then.

Polished is a great word for where I think they go wrong - polish without strong pop sensibilities/songwriting ends up sounding like background music.

i checked out best coast - i'd heard songs here and there but never listened to an album - i guess "slight" is the word i would use.

I love "The Sun Was High (So Was I)" but 'watched the cars go by/The sun was high/So was I' doesn't point to a successful singer-songwriter transition down the road.

then Alvvays came along and kind of did it better anyway

prescient thread starter

anyone digging this? feel like she's writes much stronger songs than vivian girls (haven't heard dum dum girls) -- "when i'm with you" is pretty much a perfect flippant summer romance song (i guess it's not necessarily about summer romance or w/e but it evokes that musically at least) & this new joint "our deal" sounds like neko case, which might be an indication that she's not as one-note as other lo-fi reverby indie girls

anyway, this is cool stuff. hope she puts out a full length soon.

― ibaka flocka flame (J0rdan S.), Thursday, April 29, 2010 7:06 PM (thirteen years ago)

I think it's pretty common to feel that a record release falls a bit flat, apart from very few albums that are part of the hype cycle it's rare to have listeners pay as much attention to your new record as you did

but then Best Coast had the gift and the curse of their debut album being hyped during Peak Indie - how could anything ever live up to that?

ultimately I think it's sad that she would focus so much on the commercial reception - it's the journey, not the destination! she wrote an album and recorded it, had fun, she's happy with it - what more do you want? external validation sucks

I did not get a good price for my autographed Crazy For You LP when I sold it in 2017

I'll go ahead and more firmly stand by my suspicion that despite the rant itself, she "knew what she was doing" by posting it in the way that she did. I'm too cynical about social media to believe any post isn't orchestrated for maximum clicks these days. I'm also bored enough to keep thinking about it apparently.

But I wouldn't just say that about any rant - it's the melodramatic drawn out "i'm ready to have this conversation now" thing that feels designed to make people who get it as a "suggested reel" on insta click through. I also don't know how tiktok works though. uggghh wtf am I talking about I'm so bored, I need to do actual work

TikTok has too many people talking at you with truthbombs and not enough cute cat videos.

xp you're doing fine, keep up the good work procrastination

interesting that ed droste seems to be commenting on the stereogum article, grizzly bear has a pretty big spotify hit with "2 weeks" but I don't hear much talk abt them - they were of course everywhere in ~2009-2012

funny you should mention them, since Nabisco wrote that article 11 years ago titled "Grizzly Bear Members Are Indie-Rock Royalty, But What Does That Buy Them in 2012?"

https://www.vulture.com/2012/09/grizzly-bear-shields.html

enabler!

Grizzly Bear are pretty forgotten for sure. However everything gets rediscovered again eventually, leading to the ultimate achievement any reappraised band of the past can hope for...

...big clunky boxset reissues

is there a thread for a post Peak Indie appraisal of what the hell was going on in those years? it's probably been discussed a million times but interesting to look at from a distance, seemed so natural at the time and now seems so weird

i think there is something going on with peak indie maybe...but this has always happened it's definitely the exception rather the rule to when you leave a successful band to have a solo career that's as successful, like i dunno tommy shaw from styx or steve perry from journey didn't have the same success solo either

if peak indie was still as popular now, i don't think this would have been as successful as best coast

it's also a pretty mediocre record!

What are you finding weird about the "peak indie" era (what is this exactly just the 00s?)? Makes sense thinking back to the heyday of p4k as the epicenter of indie buzz acts breaking and all the resulting fervor.

poor phrasing on my part, probably not too different from what the grunge era would have been like to live through - when you're in the middle of a massive trend like that, it seems... inevitable? as if the current aesthetic is timeless and everlasting and objectively important when really it's very of it's time and soon over

it's definitely the exception rather the rule to when you leave a successful band to have a solo career that's as successful

totally agree, will sheff seems to have ditched the okkervil river moniker and.. tough for streams, I think... conor oberst too... how would a dan bejar album fare?

interesting that boygenius pulled off the reverse model

Supergroup of buzzworthy singer-songwriters is a better investment

Passion Pit called

Also 2010--the year best coast broke--was very much the tail end of this so-called "peak indie" era, whether it felt like it at the time or not. Reading through the new artists on the pitchfork "best of 2010" list is like looking at a graveyard in a way that's not as true of, say, the site's 2005 list.

The "gapdy" thing was really the exclamation point on peak indie; even the next releases from those five bands were substantially less acclaimed/popular.

what does this all mean for the second Wet Leg album

Probably nothing, but if Rhian Teasdale goes solo in 10 years...

wow, I was checked out on indie rock I've never heard any of those GAPDY albums

what does this all mean for the second Wet Leg album

And don't forget the successful memory-holing of 2011 Pazz and Jop winner Tune-Yards

v strange to think that being a buzz band was a career

I remember Eleanor Friedberger (Fiery Furnaces) saying in an interview that she wished she had started her music career 10 years earlier, to have that much longer runway in building up a fan base... but I'm not sure how much you can really game it out that way, seems like only a select few bands/artists at that level (like those already named) can sustain a career, especially after a "going-solo" move.

her solo stuff has been really great

but yeah overall i mean bands get forgotten about...how many people care about Grand Funk Railroad? Quicksilver Messenger Service? Kix (sorry Chuck)? Orgy? The Grass Roots? Vertical Horizon?

all those bands were way bigger than Best Coast

I wouldn't really lump eleanor friedberger in with this...

that said how many bands had like a single on 99 records in '81 and still tour off it

Grizzly Bear are pretty forgotten for sure

Dan and Chris Bear from that band scored Past Lives this year and we’re all hoping they get a deserved Oscar nod for it (personally rooting for Mica to win it, tho)

grizzly bear may have broken up or whatever, but they are not forgotten.

it's been said many times before, but whatever bands were on some level "cool" ~10 years ago are almost always seen as lame/boring/uncool in current times. that's where grizzly bear is imo

Tune-yards!

Maybe the funny thing about the memory-holing of peak indie/gapdy is that there was a disconnect between the critical discourse and popular music - post poptimist eoy lists may age better wrt reflecting actually popular music (although there's a whole thread for post-poptimist canon building)

These bands are from more like 15 years ago. The year of gapdy was 2009.

There are definitely musicians from that era that I have not lost interest in, but I didn't think anyone considered the MP3 blog bands of the late 00s were viable long term or even medium term at the time. My recollection was that most people would hear a catchy and derivative jingle, look for the band and .rar on Google, download a folder with 12 identical songs, put it on a playlist called 'driving around with Barbara' and forget about it within a month. It's funny that it was an alternative to the mainstream pop of the time because it's whole mode of consumption was so relentlessly about disposability. If this music had any capital in the hipster wars era it was hearing and disposing of a song/band before it your friend with a veterinary surgery haircut decided they were her new favourite band or subsequently you heard it at American apparel.

This is not even a dismissal of the motivations of those actually making the music, who were likely no more or less sincere than any other hype cycle of pop bands. I'm sure plenty of people believed in what they were doing but the vehicles that propelled this stuff did so much to encourage instant amnesia.

I also feel like so many bands had really similar names.

Maybe it's the same or worse now. I imagine that canny big budget stars have just lifted some of the viral marketing ideas from bands/musicians of that era to diversify their portfolio. Taylor swift and Beyonce seem like examples of this in some ways. Billie eilish.

the most curious thing about this whole conversation is that the best of the Best Coast albums is California Nights which came out in 2015 and therefore missed "peak indie"

I don’t personally identify with that post at all, plax!

Ugh the last thing I wanna do this lovely morning is post about Pitchfork but from 2007-2012 the indie music scene was entirely defined by that website’s aesthetic and the musical values it espoused

It’s always been weird to me that “GAPDY” is this thing. Who made that up? Why are Phoenix and YYYs in there? Phoenix are French pop who took off in like what, 2004? and we’re Coppola famous? YYYs were even earlier? They were a Vice Magazine band. Why are they included in this acronym and why not Vampire Weekend instead? Makes no sense to me

Haha “we’re Coppola famous” we certainly are

The origin of "GAPDY" is that albums by those five bands dominated year-end lists in 2009. I think Whiney coined it?

____

How many lists are gonna be fuckin AnCo, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Pro and Phoenix in different orders?

― my adrian langs a ton (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, December 10, 2009 7:35 AM (fourteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

...

i do have to say that grizzly/AnCo/phoenix/dirty pro/yeahyeahyeahs (GAPDY) are all perfectly fine albums, but to call them the BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR really just means that you're not listening to enough records.

― my adrian langs a ton (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, December 10, 2009 2:06 PM (fourteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Pazz & Jop top 6 for 2009 was those albums plus Neko Case at #3.

As for tUnE-yArDs I’ve always had the same opinion of that band: the first album bIrD-bRaInS is amazing and it played at every good party in Canada the year before she got famous. It’s a great album. They do amazing film scores now. Also listen to Ruth Garbus.