Covid anxiety can be a real bitch at SXSW when you’re a Canadian who’s still into masking up while practically everyone else is in “Covid’s over” party mode and throwing caution to the wind. But it certainly helps to ease the anxiety when you’re watching an old favourite play a solid set to a packed ( but not obnoxiously so) room. And I guess the free White Claws help too, though you’ve gotta take the mask off for that. Hey, we all have to make sacrifices sometimes.
The aforementioned old favourite was Best Coast and yes, they were playing a late afternoon set at The Sunset Room, rebranded for the last few days of the fest as the White Claw Surf House. Bethany Cosentino speculated that part of the reason they may have been booked to play there was the beach-like vibe of songs like “The Only Place.” That song was an obvious highlight of their set, as were tracks like “California Nights”, “Everything Has Changed” and “Goodbye”, which she dedicated to her cat Snacks, who recently passed away.
Cosentino mentioned how the band first played SXSW about twelve years ago and that it felt good to be back in Austin. She also noted how good it felt to be playing in front of a crowd in general again, seeing as how the band has had to put their tour behind 2020’s Always Tomorrow on pause several times over the last two years or so. And it felt good to see them too, even if I was pretty much the only one wearing a mask.