Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Best Coast vs Beach House: An Epic Scenester Battle / A New Doll For Dennis


With new albums from Beach House and Best Coast just released, summer is off to a fine start for lazy, PBR-sipping scenesters.  You can see Best Coast at the Granada this Sunday (remember when they played the Garage Fest and Bethany brought that kid on stage and we all said "Awwww?  here's a reminder ).

But today we aim to figure out which of the new records is truly the best.  To accomplish this, we will turn to Pitchfork, to Kip's "boner-scale," and to the album covers.

If Pitchfork really loves something (like the most recent Real Estate record), you can bet there's a Terence Malick reference on the way.  Beach House's Bloom gets a 9.1 and this blurb:


"Filmmakers call the part of the day right before the sun goes down "the magic hour." It's that brief moment when the waning daylight causes everything to take on a holy, hazy glow. It took Terrence Malick about a year to shoot his 1978 movie Days of Heaven because he insisted on filming only during this time of day, but the results perfectly capture and distend that dizzy, overripe feeling of right before something very good ends. Bloom does that, too." 

Full review here

Best Coast's The Only Place fares considerable worse, with a 6.2 and some pretty pointed critiques:

"[the title track] has no specificity and comes off like a tourism jingle. "We got the ocean/ Got the babes/ Got the sun/ We got the waves" is a couplet Mike Love would dismiss as shallow."

Full review here

What's our verdict?  Richard gives Beach House the edge because their lyrics sound less like a tweenager's diary, while Chip goes for Best Coast because Betthany Cosentino ranks higher on his "boner-scale" than Victoria Legrand. 

 







What about in terms of album covers?   Obviously, we prefer Best Coast's cute bear to Beach House's...lights?







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But what's happening in Larryville today, you may be asking? The biggest news, certainly, is Dennis's new doll.  The LJ-World captured this terrific photo of a boy who appears more than a little puzzled by the mannequin.  Does this mark some new stage in the evolution of Dennis, arguably downtown LFK's most famous denizen?  Let's wait and see.

 




1 comment:

Audiophile said...

Always good to have a spare bucket of cat litter on hand.