Best Coast, 'Fade Away'

When Best Coast played during Welcome Week in August, a member of the audience insisted on launching burgers at the band, and I think he got one or two onstage before security hauled him off.

Aside from that, the show was unremarkable.

Beth Cosentino sang every song with the same bored voice, and touring drummer Ali Koehler kept banging out the same “School of Rock”-approved drum pattern for every song.

From time to time, I found myself turning to my buddy to asking if Best Coast hadn’t already played the current song twice already.

Two months later and two tracks into Best Coast’s new “mini-album” — that’s what the band calls it, though its 27-minute run time still places it within EP territory by my count — my frustration with Best Coast continues.

“This Lonely Morning” and “I Wanna Know” sound like the same lazy, homogenized indie-surf rock Wavves started making when it gave up on the notion that life sucks.

However, “Who Have I Become?” is a legitimately decent indie pop rocker.

Since it’s the longest track on the EP, it seems Best Coast knows.

Is that a different drum beat? Kitschy hand claps?

It’s even driven by a bona fide guitar riff instead of a derivative, garage-rock chord progression.

And the title track, albeit slower and less fun, has some nice, spacey production that adds a dreamy texture to the track reminiscent of early Lush.

Though the album never returns to these relative heights, at least it doesn’t fall back into the mediocrity of the first two songs.

Penultimate track “Baby I’m Crying” finds Cosentino slowing it down again, this time to a lesser effect, and though her lyrics here are arguably the best on the EP, she’s still no Stephan Jenkins.

Closer “I Don’t Know How” brings back the same unfortunate drum beat, but Cosentino’s energy renders it a decent if unremarkable and derivative conclusion.

At this point in the members’ careers, no one is expecting Best Coast to change its sound much.

There’s no reason to — it has found a formula that has made it a relatively successful indie band, and Pitchfork keeps forking out the 7.4s.

Though in certain parts of “Fade Away” you can hear the band trying different styles, these moments fade all too soon.