Suffering from a bronchial infection, I missed Best Coast at Terminal 5 last week, and maybe that's my biggest miss of the year. I am obsessed with The Only Place, their 2012 album which seems to have not done all that well in the charts (Beachhouse bafflingly beat it out). And while I didn't think that much of the Iggy Pop- Bethany Costantino duet, I did like her back up harmonies.
Best Coast latest single is not on the current album. "Storms" is a four and a half minute long goodbye, apparently aimed at Nathan Williams, which finds the singer tackling loneliness and the end of the relationship with as much grace as she can manage. Except, sunny skies are not her element, storms are. An elegant metaphor for the difficulties Bethany has in transitions. And the lyric both plain speak and poetic, seems to be burrowing under her emotional loss.
The music itself is similar folk-pop, anchored by an acoustic guitar and with a vocal that seems to ache in self-pity and hopelessness, but the song, like so many of Best Coasts, lacks a clearly memorable melody. If it had one, if you could sing along to it, it might be a big one. But it doesn't feel like "Storms" business is to be big. Its business is to be almost diary like, it is the nowness of the emotions, like listening into a private conversation in real time.
But the song has a half finished quality to it, a problem for awhile, really forever for the band. It is what put me off best Coast in the first place and it is the worst aspect of The Only Place.
Grade: B+