In February of last year, Best Coast returned with their latest album Always Tomorrow. Around the same time next year, the duo is releasing a deluxe version of that LP, which includes five bonus tracks: two B-sides that were released for Record Store Day, one Sheryl Crow cover, and two yet-unheard songs. We get to hear one of the unreleased songs today—it’s called “Leading” and it features the rising punk group The Linda Lindas.
“Leading” is emotive and punchy, reminiscent of Pat Benatar. “I’m a believer in a healthy dose of pessimism / ‘Cause expectations are just resentments waiting to happen,” goes one line. “Leading” teeters between hope and despair, unsure of this doom-laden world. “Whatever happened to believing in the truth,” Bethany Cosentino asks during the chorus. The song “is about trying to find hope during the apocalypse, with background vocals from my favorite young voices, The Linda Lindas,” Cosentino said in the press release.
She also gave some insight into these conflicting emotions: “When Always Tomorrow came out, I personally felt like I had mastered the chaos of my own life (I literally wrote a song about it called ‘Master of My Own Mind’). It felt like a bookend to all the other Best Coast records that wrestled with crisis and melodrama. But then, a global pandemic shut the world down, and I was forced to sit with what I thought I knew and then a whole new pot of boiling emotions started cooking up. There’s nothing like telling the whole world you *got this* and then realizing you don’t.”
Listen to “Leading” below. The deluxe version of Always Tomorrow is out January 7.
