Cali enthusiast rejoice: Best Coast's The Only Place album review

Best Coast released its sophomore album The Only Place this month just in time for summer.

Some of the newer songs are a bit redundant mainly because they start off with the same guitar and drum intro (“The Only Place,” “Why I Cry,” and “Let’s Go Home”), but regardless of this minor set back the new songs are magnificent in their simplicity. Clear and precise, the record’s sound is flourishing and straightforward. Less bouncy than 2010 Crazy For You, the album has a good mixture of sad sentiment and off the wall shennantics.

Two pre-Crazy For You songs "Dreaming My Life Away" and "Up All Night" were reworked to fit on the record and are stunning. I had to go back and listen to the originals to compare them. Once a confusing mess of emo surf pop the songs now reflect the shiny inner turmoil that is equally poignant and refreshing.

The older versions are full of fuzzy guitar, weak layered vocals that are lo-fi to the core.

Heart wrenching and sweet, the new version of "Up All Night" offers up a clearer view into singer Bethany Cosentino’s psyche. It is a song full of longing. Instead of the fuzzy guitars and lo-fi layered vocals, "Up All Night" is distinct yet follows closely the classic Best Coast style fans have grown to love.

 

“Let’s Go Home” is probably the most fun song off of The Only Place besides the title track "The Only Place," an open love letter to California. Loud and energetic, “Let's Go Home” is the kind of song that makes listeners want to jump on their beds on in all its bratty glory. It's a modern anthem for homebodies everywhere in a similar vein to Weezer's "In the Garage."

On the flip side, songs like “My Life” and "No One Like You" are dripping with whiny girl rock sentiments that border on the edge of twee pop absurdity. Somehow, it works. Cosentino croons her tragic love stories of heart break and loneliness like a pro.

Bethany’s pain is beautiful. She sings with depth and precision unlike anyone else and always manages to keep it fun.

Listen to: “Better Girl,” “How They Want Me To Be,” and “Up All Night.”

Lana Del Rey's American Vision

Cross Posted from Inscaped.com



I have a bit of morbid curiosity with hype machine, hipster runoff.com poster girl, Lana Del Rey. Apparently, I'm not the only one. Del Rey's latest album "Born to Die," was released to a mix bag of critical reviews and many thought her 15 minutes of flashes in the pan were over.

Well, it's easy to dislike Del Rey. She doesn't seem very excited to sing live and her nerves are visible during her performances. Plus, she seems to sing as if she's taken far too many sedatives and either her or her wonky PR people laudibly named her "The Gangster Nancy Sinatra," which doesn't make any sense when we all know that the real Nancy Sinatra was indeed very much so a gangster.

All that aside, the Lana Del Rey machine continues to intrigue. And why? Most of us lament, who is this person? why do I care?

A wealth of industrial grade analysis exists about Del Rey. Search the web and its plentiful, everyone has an opinion, even Liz Phair. Phair wrote that Del Rey scares the "boy club" of indie-rock music and politics calling into question all the gender play and sexism involved (most of this deals with Del Rey's bee stung lips and conventional beauty) when people launch into discussions about Lana Del Rey.

And before I launch into that discussion, I bit the bullet. I listened to "Born To Die," thinking it was going to be abysmal. I wanted it to be terrible so I could get on with this monkey business.

To my surprise, I loved "Born to Die."

It was really in a way something I had not expected to hear. In my own reading of Del Rey, I imagine that it is indeed a concept album. A letter to literary tropes, cliches, feminine ideals and the love of a time gone. All this was in this album and naturally all of Del Rey's artistic shortcomings.

"Born to Die," is heavy on soundscape. It's heavy on strings, lush arrangement, sparse piano keys and heavy like lead drops. The title track is a cut and paste of dusty country singing, hip hop beats and music designed for a score.

The rest of the album plays out the same. Del Rey dips into her handbook of suggested ideas, like prostitutes on the dark and yet wacky "Off to the Races," in which she pouts and sings about a sugar daddy who keeps her living the good life. In "Carmen," she warns about the trappings of such a life over a gorgeous piece of music specifically designed to be heavy and emotive. Elsewhere on the album she's singing about 'heart shaped glasses,' 'pabst blue ribbon on ice,' and the 'national anthem.' The album is rife with allusions to Vladamir Nabokov's literary masterpiece "Lolita."

I won't spoil "Lolita" for those who have not read it, but it is indeed a tragedy, a very well written tragedy.Del Rey stumbles over herself in ambition to create the same sense of foreboding and richly layered subtext. However it is exactly this point that no one is giving her credit for. Simply put, the shortcomings of "Born to Die" are indeed clunky, but the ambition isn't. Del Rey wrote an album, which is a bit refreshing today when everyone is releasing singles. A fan of literary allusions and myths when I see one, I gravitated towards "Born to Die," because finally a woman had written something so unabashedly ambitious and yes, dark and gloomy.

To prod deeper, like many pieces of literature, the blankness in the album is maybe a bit too much fun for audiences, critics and haters alike to reach into.

Did you DARIA your Valentine's Day?

Well guess who is writing for the Huffington Post?

Daria Morgendoffer, that is.

Just in time for Valentine's Day. (Collective uh-ohs across the room). Everyone's favorite cynic drawn in 2-D with a penchant for green and sick sad world, wrote an impressive column for the Huffington Post that debuted today.

You can read the column here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daria-morgendorffer/valentines-day_1_b_1275278.html

Undercover feminism on New Girl? It's possible.

Last Tuesday marked the return of New Girl on Fox and I couldn't have been more excited.

Starting off the new year, Jess plans a surprise birthday party for Schmidt after his reservation for a party bus gets canceled in favor of Frankie Muniz.

Needless to say not everything goes according to plan. The party bus is a school bus, Jess accidentally hires a male stripper, and her boss manages to bully an invite. Nick is embarrassed of his friends around a potential new flame Julia, a lawyer with serious anger management problems, played by Lizzie Caplan. Winston messes with him by contradicting everything he says in front of Julia, ya know regular friend behavior.

Schmidt's bronemy (bro frenemy) Benjamin makes a play for Jess much to the dismay of Schmidt. We even see a very cute flashback of Schmidt's past. I say cute because it is interesting to see the different side of Schmidt when he was a good-natured chubby dude. Sadly, Cece wasn't in this episode. It's probably for the better since Benjamin was there. That dude is a serious jerk. But the big mystery of the episode is what did Schmidt do to warrant $50 in the douche bag jar? Well you'll just have to watch it to find out.

It's becoming apparent that the guys on the show have way more weird issues than Jess. Nick dropped out of law school and works at a bar. Winston is a failed athlete with a huge competitive streak, and I don't even know where to begin on Schmidt. But their flaws make them endearing and likable. On the flip side though, it seems like women aren't allowed to be a little weird.

Played by actress Zooey Deschanel, Jess comes off as more quirky than odd. In the beginning of the show Jess started off with great moments of off the wall antics and nerd references but has slowly faded into a display of offbeat humor and nearly overbearing twee optimism. While she isn't allowed to make references to Lord of the Rings, it is perfectly acceptable for Nick to use Superman to explain Jess's relationship issues. That is a major double-standard but who are we kidding? Double-standards run rampant in pop culture. At least Jess is confident enough to let her freak flag fly and not to be ashamed of being herself. This appears to be the message of the show and maybe even the catalyst of Jess's male roomies recent actions.

Regardless of the inconsistencies, New Girl is a great new comedy that is as funny as it is cute.

The post about Lana Del Rey: Pretty Girls Make Graves

You all knew it would come to this, didn't you? The inevitable post about Lana Del Rey.

Lana Del Rey maybe the most brilliant enigma of 2012 so far and I will tell you why:

First off, if you catched her performance on Saturday Night Live (hosted by Daniel Radcliffe) you may have thought it was bearable or you may have thought it was terrible. Juliette Lewis did.

The rest of twitter did and so did every music blog ready to sink it's teeth into Lizzy Grant (AKA Lana Del Rey.

Lana Del Rey is a creation, yeah, I said it. She's a music mogul's wet dream, an embodiment of assisted self-creation in an overzealous hype machine. Google Lana Del Rey controversy and you will be met with so much material of why she is to be hated from her bad lip injections (her lips are immobile y'all) to the maybe true maybe not fact that her dad is like the inventor of toaster streudel (that last one was a stretch but no he's more like a domain investor or some crap). Lana's biggest crime with the indie community is that she's way pretty, aware that she's way pretty and a little too self-aware of herself. She calls herself a "gangster nancy sinatra," and "lolita lost in the hood." I don't know about THAT.

With all her hype and hate, let's get to the real deal: the music. Lana's music is not especially remarkable. She's got a husky voice like Fiona Apple but unlike Fiona Apple, Lana's a one note, two if she's feeling like a 'bad girl.' Her music is more like sweeping soundscapes with nods to everything retro and American from Elvis to hip hop. She's a hipster projection and that's what unfortunate.I can't imagine her following up after the release of her "Born to Die," album just because it's so much hype and that it seems nearly impossible. Implosion straight ahead.


Her music is not bad, but it's not great and it's definitely not going to be substantial for all the hype. "Born to Die," and "Blue Jeans," "National Anthem" are particularly good for their wearied sound but the rest of her singles seem to float in inoffensively. No blood, sweat and tears here. Her lyrics are decent but nothing pushing for incisive, at most she embodies the one liner cliches that come from...you guessed it...old classic movies that somehow ended up in a song.

Her pouty face and Americana fetish are interesting, she looks as if she walked out of a Mad Men episode. She looks like she belongs in a dusty Ford commercial. Honestly it's the best personification of a dying vision of the American Dream. Lana Del Rey, hmmm, she's good, terrible and likely to produce more analysis than warranted (like I just did here). I want to appreciate Lana Del Rey because a "pretty" (critiques of how good her music is focus primarily on how attractive she is---irk) girl singing about Death is really my kind of party, but, it's not a party because I think, poor Lana is just too sedated with dreams of fame to really get loose.

In case you missed it....

Soooooo apparently, Mariah Carey is either a. releasing a new album b. fed up with HSN shennantics c.really into commercials d. all of the above

The* Diva, appeared in 2-3 commercials that have just begun rotation on television. One is for Jenny Craig. The advert shows Carey busting through a glitter and sequin, sparkly lycra cocoon to emerge as a svelte, bombshell, whip-your-hair-back-and-forth epic diva of new and better proportions. Of course, Carey just gave birth to twins not too long ago and her body has always been up for public debate. Aside from that, I found the commercial to be well, rather, ridiculous. It's too long and with all the hair tossing, I really did think I was watching a music video. Mariah Carey is too epic for Jenny Craig.

But she does look amazing and that's all that matters.

Happy New Year's!

Happy New Years, we hope you had a year full of shennantics and anticipate that 2012 will be full of them...I mean, c'mon 2012 is the year the world will end. And it will end with the 3D re-release of "Titanic."

Honestly, a boat sinking in 3-D, Hollywood you kill me. Not to mention Leonardo DiCaprio's frozen dead body in 3-D, this just seems to macabre and absurd to actually work but we will see.

In more movie news, fans of Rose McGowan should be totally excited this year. According to IMDB, McGowan will be in a couple films this year. Now, which films you ask?

The film version of Sylvia Plath's only novel, "The Bell Jar" and what seems to be Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." I, for one, am very stoked. I read "The Bell Jar" in high school and it was a solid book, it's more or less a classic. It seems like McGowan is backing away from the high campy films (Grindhouse, Conan the Barbarian, The Black Dahlia) and going back to doing some interesting pieces. Maybe we will see some more of McGowan's acting ability. I maintain that she is a very good actress and with the news of these two films I hope I will not be disappointed. Go Rose!