Little sweetheart, today we release our cover of Best Coast's "Better Girl". As ever, it is entirely for you - on this, Valentines Day. Here's what I wrote to announce the release on iTunes, Bandcamp, et al...

February 14, 2018
(Valentines Day)

Just six weeks ago, we released our seventh album, a 28-track double-album - SOMETIMES IN DREAMS. But, unable to restrain ourselves, today we release a new single on its very heels.

Released on Valentines Day, it’s a cover of Best Coast’s “Better Girl” and available via all the usual suspects/platforms - Apple Music/iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, CD Baby, Spotify, Deezer, et al.

Immeasurably indebted and unbelievable flattered to (occasionally) being likened to bands like Low, Slowdive, and The Velvet Underground, who we revere, we’d like to say something about Bethany Consentino and her group - we love them.

Long story short as possible - when we were wrapping up work on OF LOVE AND LOSS, still very much shattered by grief, our art director gave us a mix tape, something put together by the great Since ’78. Entitled “Adios Los Angeles”, it was all around the theme of leaving, of all that’s lost and all we might hope to one day once again find. 

The final track was Best Coast’s “Up All Night”, the kind of pop song so filled with the ache of longing and distance that I nearly fell apart listening the first time. And again. And again. I’d never heard the band before, so I got myself the album “Up All Night” came from (and, indeed, closes) - “The Only Place”.

As our band has moved deeper and deeper into post-rock terrain, it may seem a bit of an anomaly to hear how felled I was by Ms. Consentino and her sunny, bittersweet anthems - long-suffering friends are far more likely to hear me enthusing or indeed insisting on one more spin of “Metal Machine Music” at full volume - but felled I was.

“The Only Place” was in heavy rotation here at The Shrine for the better part of the winter I first acquired it and this mid-album track with its refrain - “you gotta keep me away from what they say about me” and its soaring repeated ending chorus “I wanna be a better girl, a better girl, a better girl” stuck in my throat and heart and chest.

This album, this song, came to me at the darkest of times, opening the wound of loss and longing even yet a bit deeper all in the service of helping me remember and keep moving, however hurting.

Our shoegazey version of this song, released today, on Valentines Day, is meant as a tribute both in thanks to its author and to our fallen bandmate herself, my love and partner. my soulmate, true love and best friend, Summer.

If Ms. Consentino herself comes across this, I hope she doesn’t roll her eyes too much. Because, in the immortal words of John Lydon, “we mean it, man.”

With love and faith…

Michael Serafin-Wells
Bipolar Explorer
New York City