Crazy On You

Best Coast, “Crazy On You? (Mexican Summer, 2010)
In moving from bedroom-4-track-land to a “real” studio, Ms. Coast inevitably peels away a layer of the mystery that gives her work its distinctive charge, the sensation that’s oceanic yet intimate. The good news: lifting the haze (and adding drums) reveals an excellent rock and roll band, jarring, propulsive and basic like Beat Happening or the Modern Lovers when they began, at the service of bittersweet melodies that linger in the mind’s ear. My favorites are “The End” and “When The Sun Don’t Shine.”