Wavves and Best Coast with No Joy January 31, 2011

Best Coast

Bethany Cosentino was no stranger to the stage when she began working on recordings with bandmate Bobb Bruno under the name Best Coast in 2009. A former child actress, Cosentino had started writing songs in her teens, and had garnered a strong online following by the time she was 17 thanks to a handful of squeaky-clean pop tunes she made available on her MySpace page under the nom de teen pop Bethany Sharayah. "I had interest from major labels," she said in a 2009 interview with PopSense. "And it was kind of overwhelming and I realized that I wasn't ready to be a ‘pop princess.'" In the years that followed, Cosentino put in time as a member of the spacy experimental pop group Pocahaunted and went to school in New York. She moved back to Los Angeles in 2009, at which point she started working with Bruno on Best Coast's first demos. __Drawing inspiration from '60s surf rock and girl groups, Best Coast's noisy lo-fi sound gave a nod to contemporaneous acts like Hot Lava, the Vivian Girls, and Brilliant Colors. Best Coast's first year saw a flurry of little releases: a self-titled 7" single on Art Fag; a cassette tape release, Where the Boys Are, on the U.K. label Blackest Rainbow; a split 7", Up All Night, on Atelier Ciseaux; an EP, Make You Mine, on Group Tightener; and a self-titled 7" on Black Iris. Best Coast had become something of a sensation by the time 2009 came to a close; the band enjoyed a bit of attention from the media (notably from Nylon magazine), and Make You Mine made its way onto a few year-end lists. The band embarked on its first U.S. tour early the following year, sharing the stage with the Vivian Girls. Their profile continued to rise in 2010 with the release of "When I'm with You," which was accompanied by an adorably cute video. The duo signed to Mexican Summer Records and began work on a debut album. Meanwhile, Cosentino made a summer single for Converse (a collaboration with Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij and rapper Kid Cudi) and Best Coast added a full-time drummer, ex-Vivian Girl Ali Koehler. The group's album Crazy for You, which featured Cosentino's cat, Snacks, on the cover, was released in July.

Wavves

Named for his fear of the ocean, Wavves, the skuzzy project of San Diego slacker Nathan Williams, is a blend of distorted no-fi and refined sunshiny melodies. Charmingly messy, most of his lyrics, while difficult to decipher, generally revolve around the subjects of weed, boredom, and the beach -- when he isn't poking jabs at the gloomy subculture of goth rock. Wavves was conceived just after Williams, at age 21, quit his job as a clerk at Music Trader, while he was dividing his free time between skateboarding, writing for his hip-hop blog, Ghost Ramp, and making music using an '80s Tascam cassette recorder and Garage Band software. Wavves was quickly embraced and touted as "the next big thing" by Internet music critics and fellow bloggers. __Many praised the immediacy and D.I.Y. nature of his work, and Williams capitalized on those aspects, continuously uploading free digital versions of his music -- including two 7" singles, a cassette, and an EP -- all with simple self-drawn artwork or scanned photos for cover art. Wavves' first LP, simply titled Wavves, became available around this time as well, and it was released in a limited run by Woodsist. The more confusingly titled Wavvves (note the third "V") followed just after, and was planned for release by De Stijl before Williams jumped ship to Fat Possum. In 2010, after recording some tracks with indie drummer extraordinaire Zach Hill, Williams entered the studio with Grammy-winning producer Dennis Herring to record a straightforward and surprisingly polished album. Following the August release of King of the Beach, Wavves toured as a trio with Williams assisted by former members of the late Jay Reatard's band, bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes.

Official Website: http://www.930.com/concerts/#/930/21027/