This article + photos were originally published by
Get Some Magazine in February, 2020
Desert nights are inherently magical. Something hangs in the air, palpable but indescribable. You can’t touch it, you can’t see it, but you can absolutely feel it. Add good music to that and you’ve got yourself a magical mystical cocktail of mythical proportions. Best Coast kicked off their Always Tomorrow Tour in a small Palm Springs venue. What’s more intimate than intimate? The Alibi- Palm Springs. Small in all the best ways, not cramped or divey, excellent sound, friendly staff. Maybe almost uncomfortably small when you’re a performer pouring out raw lyrics from your first studio album in five years. The distance between the band and the audience, literal inches. Best Coast filed out onto the stage and opened up with “California Nights”, the title track from their 2015 release before launching into the new material. The crowd was equally receptive of the old and the new, singing along like the album hadn’t been released just one week prior. It took singer/guitarist and lyricist Bethany Cosentino by surprise, “To see you guys singing the lyrics that have only been out for one week is psycho crazy, it melts my heart.”
Cosentino has been very public about the fact that this time around, she’s doing this all sober. Yet another potentially unnerving element of performing in such close quarters with your audience. Always Tomorrow deals heavily with this newly sober lifestyle. As the set went on, Cosentino visibly became increasingly comfortable. Settling right back into her home on the stage as though no time had passed since she last commanded it.
If reverb is your kink, Best Coast is your jam. It’s the kind of stuff that gets you through breakups and dark spells, anecdotal raw lyrics like a light at the end of the tunnel, which many in the audience attested to while waiting for the band to take the stage. Cosentino is that light for her fans, Queen of the Graceless Kids, and they are that for her. “I was not feeling worthy of praise and ya’all fucking graceless kids made me feel so loved when I did not know how to love myself, so thank you so much for that. Seriously. I don’t know where I would be without you guys and this band and Bobb… I truly don’t know.” The night ended with fan favorite “Boyfriend” as the sold out crowd went totally nuts, bopping and bouncing to the surf-pop infused tune.
To sum up the night in the words of Best Coast themselves, “California nights make me feel so happy I could die.”
Angel Melanson 