Mexican Summer

Best Coast’s The Only Place comes out signifiers ablaze: songwriter Bethany Cosentino’s vocals and self-harmonies set amid modern country/radio-pop gloss, while distorted guitars, uncomplicated arrangements and self-conscious lyrics all point toward the modesty of indie rock. It is an unsettling combination: not the shock of the new at all, but the shock of the utterly conservative. Despite ostensibly contrasting moods, the album-opening, sun-and-waves mash note of “The Only Place” ( “this is the only place for me” ) and the following break-up number “Why I Cry” ( “you don’t know why I cry” ), and most other songs, are treated with nearly the same emotionally monochromatic palette of mid-tempo attacks, distorted electrics, strummed acoustics and stacked vocals. For Best Coast, happy and sad sound the same, a hifi conceptual rendering of the lo-fi self-obfuscation of the band’s earlier singles. California dreams deserve far better.