Best Coast
Always Tomorrow [Deluxe Edition]
CONCORD
I remember listening to Always Tomorrow right away when it dropped in February of 2020. This was an album that made the beginning of quarantine a bit brighter for me. I had a virtual dance class and we had to do warm ups asynchronously. Always Tomorrow was the album that I was listening to when working on my ability to do the splits (that has since vanished). There was something darkly ironic about the way Best Coast’s long-gestating album about healing immediately got outshined by the pandemic (it was specifically about mental healing, which I feel like a lot of people needed at that time). One of the songs on the album is called “Everything Has Changed,” which was definitely true at the time—even if Bethany Cosentino’s lyrics put a much more positive spin on change than what we’d been experiencing.
Two years later, the West Coast duo is rereleasing the sunny LP as a deluxe package featuring a few new cuts. What I found the most interesting was how on the original version, the songs reflected how Cosentino was feeling, whereas the new additions are more about the listener. In “Sweetness,” Cosentino sings, “Everybody deals differently / I’m here to tell you it’s alright.” Over time, the album has shifted from being about her own healing journey to using her experience to help others. It’s still about her, but by the end of it, there’s more for the audience to take away from it. One could argue this idea also comes through in the band’s cover of “If It Makes You Happy” by Sheryl Crow—which is technically about happiness, regardless of its acidic tone.
In the song “All Alone,” Cosentino seems to reflect back to that negative space she was in. She understands that it’s still there, but by acknowledging that she feels it, it reveals how much better she seems to be doing. In their single “Leading,” Cosentino confronts the negative relationships that she’s a part of. These songs shine light on how self-improvement doesn’t necessarily mean that everything negative in your life goes away, although it does mean that you do have more control over how to deal with it. The album has been something that I’ve listened to here and there throughout the past two years because it makes me hopeful. When my personal mental health hasn’t been good, Always Tomorrow was and continues to be a reminder that things can and will get better.
