Since its debut in 2009, Best Coast has been the soundtrack of our breakups, beach-road-trip drives and hazy summer nights. If Taylor Swift is the pop queen of heartbreak and love lost, Bethany Cosentino is her cooler home-from-UC-Berkeley-for-the-summer older sister who always brings joints to the party. Florida fans of Best Coast can see Cosentino & Co. on Friday as part of Reitz Union Board Entertainment’s inaugural Big Orange Festival at 7 p.m. in the Reitz Union.
As the lyrics of “Goodbye” suggest, Cosentino’s “highs are high” and her “lows are low”: Some of her best tracks celebrate the chill California lifestyle, while others describe breakups so brutal that nothing is comforting — not even TV or a bunch of weed.
From the crunchy garage-band guitar ensembles on “Crazy For You” to the sleeker pop-rock sounds of “The Only Place” to the dreamy chillwave tracks on “Fade Away,” here it is: Your ultimate getting-ready-for-the-show Best of Best Coast playlist. Bonus: a lo-fi Beach Boys cover that’ll leave you jonesing for an entire Best Coast Beach Boys tribute.
- “Goodbye” (Crazy For You, 2010)
- “The End” (Crazy For You, 2010)
- “Boyfriend” (Crazy For You, 2010)
- “Crazy For You” (Crazy For You, 2010)
- “In My Room” (Make You Mine EP, 2010)
- “Better Girl” (The Only Place, 2012)
- “The Only Place” (The Only Place, 2012)
- “Fade Away” (Fade Away, 2013)
- “Who Have I Become?” (Fade Away, 2013)
- “I Don’t Know How” (Fade Away, 2013)
[A version of this story ran on page 10 on 4/10/2014 under the headline "Sun, waves and babes: A Best Coast playlist"]
