Labels: Mexican Summer
Review by: Andy Malcolm
What we have here is what I believe is termed in the music reviews business as “a grower”. First time through and I was distinctly underwhelmed by the apparent samey-ness of the songs, and the repeated lyrical content. The majority of songs are somewhat teen-like in the insistent pining and “WANT WANT WANT” on the subject of boys, painting a picture of emotional simplicity and far beyond border-line obsession. I suspect that this is entirely intentional, although that’s about as far as my psychological analysis of this album has progressed.
It’s hard to really pick out different songs as there isn’t much obvious difference between them, but “Crazy for You” is my favourite, particularly with the lyric “I want to kill you, but then I’d miss you”, which made me giggle a bit. “Goodbye” also stands out with it’s rumbling bass and soaring vocals. Did I mention Katie the Pest yet? This song is the one. I also enjoy how “I want To” lopes along at a snails pace before blasting to a pleasing pop punk finale. So the initial allegation that this all sounds the same is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. You just have to give it chance, otherwise if you’re not paying attention it can feel like a fairly one paced collection of summery pop music for you to kick back to, have a BBQ to, get sunburned too, whatever it is that you do whilst listening to enjoyable (BUT HIP) but pop music. Given the previous work of Best Coast, the album may come as something as a surprise although you probably downloaded it already so nobody is reading this anyway. A lot of the wilfully lo-fi trappings of their previous work has been kicked to the curb, the songs are much bigger and fully formed and perhaps they were made this way with gigs in mind as it’s sure to work a lot better than the trail broken fuzz that the swathe that their mostly OOP 7″ singles have left in their wake. This time it leans on 60s girl pop and hints of shoegaze to crank things up rather than bury everything under muck, and in the context of an LP it works perfectly.
What we’re left with is a good album that you can take what you want from. It’s a collection of simple pop songs, or maybe there’s something a bit deeper buried in there if you want to go poking around. Enjoyed.