“Oh I hate Katy Perry so much, you do not represent California girls, bitch.”

Best Coast

Crazy For You
Mexican Summer

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Golden State native Bethany Cosentino’s tweet about Perry’s recent chart-topper underscores the inspiration behind Best Coast’s Crazy for You. Instead of embracing the “I Kissed A Girl” songstress’s Barbiesque vision of 1990s Californian summer fun, Crazy for You harkens back to the more demure 1960s. Think Annette Funicello in “Beach Blanket Bingo,” not Shannen Doherty in “90210.”

Crazy for You is a study in Brill Building cliché: The album tirelessly replicates the multitracked cooing, handclaps and jangly tambourine of that label’s girl groups. The warm fuzzy drone is appealing in moderation — opener “Boyfriend” is a standout. But while lead singer and songwriter Cosentino (one half of Best Coast, along with instrumentalist Bobb Bruno) has a strong voice, her attempts to emulate Connie Francis’s blandly wistful phrasing seem inorganic. As a whole, Crazy for You apes the warmth of 1960s pop a little too faithfully, making the sound less a reference than a direct ripoff.

The album’s subject matter is similarly narrow: Crazy for You provides a 35-minute rumination on boys with a few brief mentions of weed and cats. While the sexism of the record’s reference points can be partly attributed to 1960s gender norms, Cosentino’s unwavering, obsessive devotion to an unnamed male seems uncomfortably dated in 2010. Each half-formed song blends into the next, and simplistic lyrics reminiscent of a mopey 17-year-old (“I can’t get myself off the couch / I don’t want to talk to anyone else”) don’t make it any easier to distinguish tracks. The affected childishness quickly wears thin, invoking memories of Kimya Dawson’s “Juno” soundtrack.

Crazy for You is textbook beach pop — its perma-sunny sound is a suitable soundtrack for dog days of summer-induced ennui. The album, however, seems a like disingenuous attempt to maintain Best Coast’s sloppy lo-fi aesthetic. As Cosentino’s fame increases, the "lovelorn nobody" conceit rings false: A recent collaboration with the decidedly middle-of-the-road rapper Kid Cudi for Converse and an aggressively public relationship with fellow beach enthusiast Nathan Williams (Wavves) illustrate that she’s far from anonymous.

While Crazy for You isn’t a radical departure from Best Coast’s past work, it seems possible that several of its singles could find crossover success. While the repetitiveness grows grating by album’s end, Costenino has a gift with a pop hook evident even when buried under layers of reverb: Closing track “When I’m With You” is a gem. Crazy for You isn’t destined for beach immorality like Surfin’ USA or All Summer Long, but it’ll undoubtedly make the August playlists of Urban Outfitters and Starbucks locations from the east to the west coast.