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Kerrang!Jun 7, 2012BC's second album fizzes with both upbeat hymns to fun in the sun and achingly sad odes to lost love. [May 2012, p.53
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May 31, 2012[Consentino's] gorgeous, autumnal voice still carries the weight, but Best Coast is left sounding less vital.
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May 22, 2012The chirpy opener about fun in the sun is a feint‑-the lyrics that follow are so depressive that the consistent cheer and conservatism of the tunes is like some perverse minimalist art move.
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May 16, 2012Cosentino's songwriting has definitely strengthened, it's just that instead of sounding like her peers at the Smell, she'd rather sound like her heroes on the AM dial, and that's not a bad thing.
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May 16, 2012The album does have its charms. Cosentino is still in fine voice, and she continues to have a warm and agreeable persona... [Yet linear] thinking permeates The Only Place, a grinding sense of marks being hit while inspiration is in short order.
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May 16, 2012Best Coast will never win over the cynics who like their music to sport a more assured style of intelligence and invention, but for those who fell in love with the sunburnt stoner of old, there's plenty more to revel in, here.
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May 16, 2012With repeated listens, even the least of the songs still reach for that relaxing, carefree Best Coast vibe, but the feeling takes more work to achieve compared to the immediately lovable, attention-demanding nature of their entirely natural, easy-as-pie debut.
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May 15, 2012While Crazy For You sounded like fog rolling in over the bay with its reverb-heavy production, The Only Place effectively burns it off, even when Cosentino's dear-diary lyrics are at their gloomiest.
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May 15, 2012It's a more sophisticated effort, but it doesn't disown the rudimentary pleasures of Crazy For You.
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May 14, 2012The Only Place delivers riveting drama in a rousing pop package, with Brion rescuing Best Coast from the fuzzed-out, lo-fi indie template, cleaning up their sound and enhancing the potential for mainstream appeal exponentially without diminishing their artistic credibility.
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May 14, 2012Cool little touches abound, from the chiming percussion that enhances the dusky "Dreaming My Life Away" to the waltz-time vocal coda in "Last Year."
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May 14, 2012While The Only Place loses much of the simplicity that made Crazy for You such a breezy, fun listen, there's only room for growth in records to come.
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May 10, 2012It's the sound of a group ably treading water while its scars are glossed over with a Golden State tan.
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May 10, 2012The results are surprisingly engrossing.
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UncutMay 9, 2012Musically, it's business as usual as they follow up their 2010 debut with more indie pop infused with the melodrama of The Ronettes and The Shangri-Las. [Jun 2012, p.69]
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Alternative PressMay 9, 2012The record is sophisticated. [Jun 2012, p.78]
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May 8, 2012A string of minicrises about judgy friends, bad habits and turbulent relationships – relatable quarter-life bummers, spun into hooks as indelible as Taylor Swift's.
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May 8, 2012The Only Place [is] better-sung, slower, [and] expansively produced.
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May 8, 2012Best Coast still sound like Best Coast, but now they're tidier, shinier and looking us right in the eye.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 23 out of 37
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Mixed: 11 out of 37
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Negative: 3 out of 37
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Aug 12, 2012
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Jul 21, 2012
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May 24, 2012