show review: best coast at the social

i made my first visit to the social on this past monday night - a sad, sad thing considering i've been here in orlando for almost a year, but whatever. i accompanied a friend to see perpetually-angsty-but-still-sunshiney-sounding best coast, a duo that consists of bethany cosentino and bobb bruno, with various other musicians filling in.

first: the social is SMALL! in comparison to will's pub, i felt like there definitely wasn't as much room to move around, but it was still a cool venue nonetheless, and we got there early and secured a decent spot.

those darlins (above), from nashville, opened and were not quite my style but had great stage presence. and one of the chicks had crazy eyes; LOOK! i also wished my hair could look like that. i was semi-familiar with them since i'm pretty much obsessed with every other non-country band out of nashville. and i read when i got home that their song was in this kia commercial which explains why it sounded so familiar to me when they played it.

and then...best coast! bethany was wearing a flower child headband and was sweet and fun onstage. she thanked us for selling out the first night of their tour (which, i had no idea about) and dropped f-bombs and joked about mickey mouse getting wasted. sigh. then some guy in the audience bought the whole band jaeger shots which was pretty funny.

despite the tour being for the new album, "the only place," everyone just wanted to hear old songs, which you could tell bugged her. "we have a new album...if you didn't know.." bethany quipped at one point. yikes!

throughout the set, she reminded me a lot of liz phair in both her voice and songs, which i hadn't really thought listening to their albums. but i dug it! i tend to prefer heavier, more upbeat stuff and the show dragged on a bit in the middle (at one point i think i found myself daydreaming about how cool it would be to see someone like bass drum of death here) but overall, i was really impressed.