Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
May 18, 2012Too bad it all falls apart so drastically when you factor in Cosentino's disastrous lyrics.
-
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.
-
May 15, 2012Not to say The Only Place doesn't have its moments, but they're ultimately not bold and fresh enough to avoid being drowned out by the self-absorbed kvetching.
-
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]
-
MojoJul 18, 2012It's still summer music, but The Only Place captures that moment when it's time to wrap a cardigan around your shoulders against the chill. [Jun 2012, p.83]
-
Q MagazineJun 19, 2012Themes of fun, sun and beach-bum ennui pervade, but even if it fails to reach the summery stoner highs of their previous record, there's no denying The Only Place's indomitable West Coast pop-rock melodies and sugary thrills. [Jun 2012, p.97]
-
May 29, 2012Here they're going through the motions, missionary style, with mechanical jangly pop and the wince-inducing triteness of Cosentino's lyrics.
-
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.
-
May 14, 2012It's not terrible, but it is a weaker effort.
-
May 17, 2012Elsewhere, the tunes sag rather than sing, and Bethany Constantino's lyrics about being bored and lazy become cloudily familiar.
-
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.
-
May 10, 2012It's the sound of a group ably treading water while its scars are glossed over with a Golden State tan.
-
May 15, 2012It's a more sophisticated effort, but it doesn't disown the rudimentary pleasures of Crazy For You.
-
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.
-
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.
-
May 14, 2012She's a wreck and she's out of her element, but she's flesh and blood, and that's something to love about her. It's just a shame there's not enough of it here.
-
May 15, 2012The band sounds like they're struggling to come up with a new template, a feeling that leaves The Only Place sounding shiftless and adrift.
-
Alternative PressMay 9, 2012The record is sophisticated. [Jun 2012, p.78]
-
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.
-
May 16, 2012It's the clingiest and most needy record I've heard in a while.
-
May 10, 2012The results are surprisingly engrossing.
-
May 14, 2012Each song is tediously nonspecific, the sort of doggerel any other prominent indie-rocker would cringe at the idea of singing out loud.
-
May 14, 2012There are still moments of magic but it sounds like the work of a band in transition, and not necessarily for the better.
-
May 8, 2012This is an empty record, and the exact opposite of what it means to write classic music, because through all its forced smiles and fake problems, it's an album that means absolutely nothing to me.
-
MagnetMay 24, 2012The songwriting is flat-footed, with few moments that break from the homogeneous stupor. [No.87 p.54]
-
May 14, 2012Only Place doesn't say or feel much, which would be fine if it didn't sound like it was trying so hard to say or feel a lot.
-
May 16, 2012Another eleven baseless mehs that belong nowhere else than on a blog that no one reads.
-
May 16, 2012With Cosentino's voice free of effects and upfront in the mix, it's more apparent just how rudimentary her songwriting is.
-
May 31, 2012[Consentino's] gorgeous, autumnal voice still carries the weight, but Best Coast is left sounding less vital.
-
May 8, 2012Best Coast still sound like Best Coast, but now they're tidier, shinier and looking us right in the eye.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
May 21, 2012While there's certainly something to be said for BestCoast's paeans to the utopian side of life near the Pacific, the subtle shifts in Cosentino's songwriting are best experienced when the rays of sunshine are muted.
-
May 8, 2012The Only Place [is] better-sung, slower, [and] expansively produced.
-
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."
-
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.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 23 out of 37
-
Mixed: 11 out of 37
-
Negative: 3 out of 37
-
Aug 12, 2012
-
Jul 21, 2012
-
May 24, 2012