For their second album, The Only Place, California duo
Best Coast hired
Jon Brion as producer. Right away it's clear that the fuzzily lo-fi noise pop sound of their debut,
Crazy for You, was a thing of the past, and the band was looking to smooth things out quite noticeably. Hiring
Brion to produce a noise pop record is like asking Rothko to paint your mailbox. What
Brion and the band have done is replace the simplistic drone of the distorted guitars with a more layered, much janglier sound, added tons of space to the arrangements, and made sure each song gets the sonic approach it needs instead of the set-it-up-and-record-it style of
Crazy. The result is an album that has a classic pop/rock sound that anyone who's heard an
R.E.M. or
Beach Boys or
Springsteen record will instantly identify with and understand. It may disappoint anyone who wanted Crazy for You, Pt. 2, but the band didn't make this record for those people. On a sonic level alone, the record works very well.
Bethany Cosentino reliably writes super-catchy melodies and sings them winningly,
Bobb Bruno does a fine job filling in the songs with hooky guitar lines, and
Brion adds the little touches that have made his name as a producer. The uptempo songs have a light bounce that will have people bopping along, the ballads have fully realized arrangements that sound dreamy as can be, and the whole record has a warmth that was missing from anything the band did before. Give the group credit for taking a step forward from
Crazy for You: the album sounds great, full of catchy and well-crafted songs. ~ Tim Sendra