It seems Wavves’ Nathan Williams has been busier than he lets on with his surfer/slacker/stoner persona. “Sail to the Sun” is a brighter jam than you’d usually expect from Wavves–gone is the heavy handed fuzzed out everything, and instead we’ve got, well, a really rad little pop-punk jam. Lok out for a new album off Mom+Pop this Spring.

The difficult thing about reviewing reviewing the new album from Best Coast, The Only Place, is that it is totally immaculately and fun and sunny. Singer Bethany Cosentino has crafted eleven solidly middleweight songs, each supported by the solid instrumental work of her talented-yet-shadowy bandmate Bobb Bruno and the hallmark gutbucket punch of producer Jon Brion. The Only Place is an effortlessly pleasurable listen; the most common references for the band’s sound are the Beach Boys and Fleetwood Mac, which more or less captures Best Coast’s obvious grasp of pop songwriting. Cosentino hits all the sweet spots, and the listener can relax and just go along for the ride – which, while never less than totally and completely predictable, is still very good fun.

The sad thing about The Only Place is that its devotion to fun seems to have come at the expense of actual emotional depth. This is not to say that the album is a one-trick emotional pony – in fact much of the lyrical material is pretty darn morose – but that actually the album’s whole aesthetic makes it hard to take very seriously. This is due mostly to the fact that the retro song forms Cosentino employs sound, well, cribbed. The melancholy of “Do You Love Me Like You Used To” seems shallow, if not simulated; the title track, a sunny number about California beaches, is just as wanly blank. (Most successful is “Dreaming My Life Away,” a slinky, low-energy bossa nova that somehow avoids the brashness in which the rest of the album seems to delight.)

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