Best Coast: California Nights review – LA teen rock demands attention

Bethany and Bobb’s third record is like a needy, narcissistic LA teen in an ironic Avril Lavigne T-shirt who loiters round the house, nagging and nudging you until you’ve no option but to be endeared by its gawkish vulnerability. It begins with the heavily medicated Feeling OK, falls hook, line and sinker on the Hole-homage Heaven Sent, asks “Why don’t you like me?” during Jealousy, before addressing more pertinent questions, “What is life? What is love? What’s the meaning of it all?” on So Unaware. Some of this is perhaps expressed quite knowingly, but since the fuzz has been stripped from the lo-fi crackle of their former records, Best Coast’s lyrics have never held such clout. In among the keening college stuff is the languid desert rock of the title track, which gently spirals into a stoned dream as the hot Californian sky burns out the boredom of suburban reality.