“I’m trying to just let myself be.”
On Best Coast’s newest project, Always Tomorrow, Bethany Cosentino is finally given the chance to reflect on the past decade of her life and musical career.
She began working on the album three years ago, while spending time at home following a grueling tour in support of their previous album California Nights. “It was the first time in a really long time that I had time off,” she says. Rather than tranquility, during this time she faced a whirlwind of anxieties and existential questions and Cosentino struggled with writer’s block.
This led to Bobb Bruno, the second half of the rock duo, playing a key role in the early development of several tracks. While Cosentino is usually the main songwriter of the pair, she notes that “this is the first time we ever collaborated in terms of the structure or the core of a song.”
The album’s catchiest song, however, is one that she wrote alone with her guitar. On “Everything Has Changed,” Cosentino recalls past struggles and remarks on a new, positive way of life, one that she had not yet adopted when writing.
“It’s a song about a life that I wasn’t living at the time, but a life that I wanted to be living, so it was almost like this weird manifestation power tool.”
She recorded the song in her walk-in closet at home, a technique that–amidst a pandemic–may be the only thing that hasn’t changed. But if the three years spent making Always Tomorrow taught her anything about quarantine living, it’s that she doesn’t need to force herself to create. “Try to let yourself feel what you’re going to feel,” she says. “When you push, that’s when your head can get a little wacky.”
-Claire Lin Jenkins
