Best Coast – Scala, London 01/12/10

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Click on an image to enlarge | Photographs by Jonathan Fisher

Looking around the room this evening the reign of Best Coast as the indie darlings of the moment is still clearly in place, their hazy sun soaked songs set to provide the soundtrack to this freezing cold, wintry night. Fronted by the effortlessly cool Bethany Cosentino, the LA based purveyors of fuzzy lo-fi surf pop scattered tonight’s set with tracks from their critically lauded full length debut Crazy For You in and amongst rarer numbers. But before their infectious and gritty harmonies can filter through the speakers it’s the turn of UK outfit Spectrals.

Crisp twangs ring through the air whilst the tambourine’s zils shimmer as they pound against the drums in place of a stick on single ‘Peppermint,’ taken from their debut EP Extended Play. As singer and creator Louis Jones listless northern drawl groans over sixties infused riffs, the bass swells and the melodies howl. ‘Chip A Tooth (Spoil A Smile)’ is the band’s “slowie” claims Jones as he encourages everyone to have “a little sway” to the wholesome, almost doo-wop, motown inspired keys. Although admirably accomplished for such a newly formed venture, there was something slightly lack lustre about their performance this evening as each song seemed to get slightly lost in the similarity of next.

Energy levels are much higher for Best Coast’s entrance as bassist Bobb Bruno and drummer Ali Koehler step on stage to ‘I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ with Cosentino and a bottle of champagne in tow. Kicking things of with the slightly grungy guitars of ‘Bratty B’ Cosentino’s smoky smooth vocals ring out without the layered backing vocals that added so much texture and warmth to this years acclaimed record. The lack of hushed multiple vocals results in a rather sparse rendition of ‘Crazy For You’ as crisp riffs transcend into the Breeders channelling sensibilities of ‘Goodbye.’

Caught out by technical problems, Cosentino’s vocals are missing from ‘The End’, a problem that goes unnoticed by the band and the sound desk despite everyone in the crowd flailing their arms in some desperate attempt to draw attention to the fact no one can hear a word she is singing. The crowd applauds as the vocals come back up for the last refrain before Cosentino realises what had happened and yells “could you not hear me at all, what’s up with that London?!” After a resounding “Yes” to the question of whether they should play it again “The End Part 2”, as the young singer called it, was an absolute highlight of the evening as its fuzzy melodic guitar strummed to an infectious rhythm.

With aching vocals, ‘Summer Mood’ and ‘Boyfriend’ really do sweep in an air of carefree summer days: the blistering guitar strings howl whilst the rallying cries of ‘I Want You’ intensify with each shriek. The opening, distortion drenched strums of ‘When I’m With You’ accompany the heavy rolling bass line as she and Bruno strike a back to back pose before everything descends into a furious, frenzied wall of noise.

Returning for the encore swigging from a freshly opened bottle of champagne, Cosentino’s nasally, saccharine vocals coo ‘That’s The Way Boys Are’ down the microphone. Picking up her guitar for ‘This Is Real’ the rock ‘n’ roll queen inside of Cosentino screams: “I don’t care if you’re too cool to dance, you better dance to this:” and dance everyone does before the heady summery haze of this evening fades and they head home in the snow.