Best Coast @ Cargo, London

If you occasionally go through lean periods in finding cool new bands to get excited about, these depressing droughts can sometimes make it seem like all music itself is drying up. What if, after more than 50 years of rock n’ roll, there is just nothing fresh left to come? Have we heard all there is to hear?

Well, if ever there was a band to dispel worries like that, it’s Best Coast.

Sure, it’s great when an ornately constructed album like Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs comes along, full of innovative sounds to wallow in and ambitious, multi-layered visions that could never be squished into two-minute singles. In contrast, tonight in East London Best Coast offer up nothing that’s revolutionary, nothing that’s particularly different to what the Beach Boys and The Beatles were doing generations ago, but does that matter? Not in the slightest.

Watching Beth Cosentino sing about wishing her cat Snacks could speak this band make you realise that, even after all these years, the seductive simplicity of the three-chord pop tune still holds its own. In the hands of Cosentino and her cuddly teddy bear of a co-guitarist, Bobb, the sun-bleached Californian melodies of ‘Crazy For You’ and ‘Bratty B’ feel as dreamy as a summer evening spent smoking a spliff and roasting marshmallows on Big Sur.

Yet the darker element that underpins it all – not least in ‘Boyfriend’’s abundant minor-key reverb, or the line “Nothing makes me happy, not even TV or a bunch of weed” from ‘Goodbye’ – brings something different to the mix too. They make already inevitable shoulder-swaying and toe-tapping all the more irresistible for the tightly-packed crowd.

It takes quite some talent to simultaneously evoke both happiness and melancholy this expertly. They’re back off to LA again, but let’s hope Best Coast hit these shores again soon.