Who is Bennett Coast? A filmmaker who happens to be a songwriter. A songwriter who happens to be a filmmaker. Spike Jonze if he grew up in the age of Frank Ocean’s Blonde. A Gen-Z Ryan McGinley who designs his own merch. The Gallagher Brothers, if the first movie they fell in love with was Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Los Angeles-based Coast is all of these things. A ruthlessly talented, ambitious creative who does it all.
On his debut EP, Where Are You Going?, 22 year-old Coast lets us in on the mystery, just a little bit. Like his work as a visual artist, Coast’s music is a reflection of his surroundings and his youth. Huge vistas, grassy hills, the blue of the sea. Boys getting into fights in parking lots. A first kiss with someone you end up being really, really sweet on. All of it is deeply personal and felt. The cascade of drum machines on “Driver” fall into hazy guitars, and Coast’s vocals oscillate from the staccato of a rap to something more languid. In the video for the song, Coast lights up a cigarette, gets in a car, begins a journey. What unfolds is a rapid-fire energy of moments unfolding, a controlled chaos, all of it revolving around a mantra of work, life, sleep. A bright red sports car does donuts. A naked woman dives into a pool. A cop kisses his wife as her mistress crawls out the window. Coast dabbles around in a cubicle, pulling the strings of it all.
Much of Coast’s art is like this: defies easy categorization, embraces the coming, the going, the catharsis. He reaches for roots, the bottom-line harmonies of human experience. It makes sense: Coast is an inherently introspective person. Someone who grew up in the Bay Area suburbs and never quite fit in, getting into a few fights along the way. Someone who tried out film school but was already making videos at the age of seven. Where Are You Going? is a reflection of all of that. It’s a story about growing up, fitting in, not fitting in, being who you think other people want you to be only to end up singularly yourself. It’s about watching your world dilate, get huge. One minute you’re driving around your small town, the next, you’re in college, figuring out who you are and what to hold on to.
Music, for Coast, is an extension of all of his other artistic practices, all of which are connected, incredibly symbiotic. Coast is growing, sinking into his seat, shaping the aches and sighs into a substance worth sharing—the result is something like an anchor, a pin to drop on a time in your life.
